


What You're Told

by reverte_ad_infernum



Category: None - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:24:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 50,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2030175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reverte_ad_infernum/pseuds/reverte_ad_infernum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dystopian bildungsroman novel stressing the importance of the intellectual life to human nature.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You're Told

WHAT YOU’RE TOLD  
A Bildungsroman novel by Emily West

 

CHAPTER ONE  
Forward, nay, we have gone back, Corpses turn in coffins black, Our ancestors all cry “Alack!”, Forward, nay, we have gone back.  
Onward once and retreat twice, Man only creates newer vice, As hate we love and love despise, Onward once and retreat twice.  
In creation, man destroys, Making weapons out of toys, His heart is naught save spiteful ploys, In creation, man destroys.  
How can man claim to have grown? Misuse of growth is all he’s known.   
It was not as though the people chose for the Cataclysm to happen. It merely did. It was not as though they chose the life they now lived. It merely was. And similarly, it is not as though they did not want this life. It was merely given to them, or so some say. The Republic, however, had its purposes in teaching the Cataclysm to be a Historical Necessity. If there had been no Cataclysm, they reasoned, then the Few would never have coalesced into the Elite, and the Elite would never have coalesced into the Council of Republic Officials. In fact, the historians of the Republic had always taught that the Cataclysm was a beneficial part of the natural order of the universe. Camdyn Layne Alethea’s father seemed to have a tighter grip on these concepts. He had always been able to understand and explain things with such skill and eloquence, and Camdyn Layne had learned from her father to question anything that the Republic Officials held in high regard, even if it did seem right and beneficial. She trod along the sidewalks of the Metropolis— a city shaded by immense, concrete- block walls that towered high over most of the buildings, but were of a height that allowed for the Officials, who convened at the topmost levels of the efficiently engineered skyscrapers, to look out onto the desolate world around them. As she walked, she considered her father, deeply admiring his bold freedom of thought. Of course, that only managed to get him lost, she thought to herself, giving a little shake to flick the stinging raindrops off the end of her round, delicate nose.  
She was twelve years of age, but in the 14th year of Republic Education, which, of course, started from birth. She had skipped years four and five, having been taught at home by her father to read at a startlingly young age. This had not been well- met by the Republic Education Officials, who distrusted books completely and did not consider them to be safe to keep on private property. However, Camdyn Layne’s rapid progress had necessitated her acceleration in the program. Unfortunately, this meant that the Republic more closely monitored Camdyn and her mother, out of suspicion for intelligence and progress. But that was something to be expected, was it not?  
At any rate, she was a genuinely unique twelve- year- old girl, often drawing the eye of a particularly obedient or conformed passersby as she walked to school each morning. She had a round, pale face — smattered with freckles — which housed sizeable, empathetic gray eyes and a mouth that looked as though there were a wise question waiting patiently behind it. Her hair, which was very soft and fine and of an auburn- chestnut color, was unusually long for a Metropolis citizen’s, nearly all of whom had a short, cropped cut— men and women alike — even Camdyn’s mother. In general, she had it braided down her back, keeping much of it out of her face, but allowing several curling wisps to flow freely and softly, framing her delicate visage in a way that gave her an odd, dreamlike appearance. In addition, she had a strong fascination with skirts. This was another factor of Camdyn Layne’s life that the Republic Officials disapproved of and mentioned often in its Behavioral Reports. Camdyn Layne had learned that when the Republic Officials “encouraged” something, it truly meant “enforced,” but when they “suggested” something, they would not punish any citizen of the Metropolis who did not follow the guideline. Rather, they would merely annoy the Citizen in question with nagging, negative Behavioral Reports. Camdyn, being unusually clever, would naturally receive such reports regardless of how she acted, and opted not to wear the “suggested attire” that nearly every citizen of the metropolis donned each day. Pale gray denim pants, a pale gray t- shirt in either short or long sleeves, and little black shoes — resembling socks — made of stretchable fabric, but having a durable rubber sole on the bottom. This could be topped with a gray overcoat if the weather demanded. Guardsmen wore a purplish gray uniform. Republic Officials wore white collared shirts beneath their gray jackets, and, if they had just been to, or were on their way to a Sensory Projection Center, a white apron over it. Other than these, there were few personal variations in the attire of the Metropolis’s citizens.  
Camdyn wove and sewed for herself, being unable to purchase clothing she preferred in shops or black markets— two accommodations that were dwindling in number as the years wore on. Weaving and sewing were enjoyable hobbies, making skirts and dresses and little coats that fit together, all still made of that dingy Republic Gray, but being much more free- spirited and expressive, both of which were aspects of humanity that Republic Officials had been trying to choke out of their constituents since the Great Cataclysm. “Human Passion merely leads to dissent,” they often stated, especially in Camdyn’s Behavioral Reports. But she did not mind. She was used to them bothering her, as her father had been used to it. He had always worn a thick, black mustache and had only drawn the Republic’s disapproval with his “instigative individuality”. “We are all One,” the reports had insisted, “and must function as such.” Mr. Alethea had always laughed at that. He had been such a philosophical man, but not even at the level that the religious folk were. He quoted pre- cataclysmic thought more often than surveillance liked. Once, he had told a man— a devout follower of the set of Republic- Approved doctrines— that a certain man called Marx had written that “religion is the opiate of the people,” and that only a fool would take the Republic’s Religious principals down his throat without first questioning them. This had earned him a Correctional and Re- Educational session in Behavior Maintenance, but that did not faze him in the slightest. He was perfectly fine with being told what to do. He merely never did it. It worked quite well for him until his disappearance.  
Camdyn sighed and hiked the strap of her Republic Gray messenger- bag further up her shoulder. As she did, she heard a low, steady bell- tone issue from somewhere within the bag, drawing her eye to it in confusion. Odd, she thought, I rarely make updates, lest it be an emergency or a holiday. They’re under such tight surveillance that you can get Behavioral Reports based off of your updates alone. Understanding that it was certainly not a holiday, she dug into her bag and fished out her information tablet. With a flick of her wrist, the transparent plate of glass glowed blue, read her fingerprint, and opened to show her the update.  
DO NOT GO PAST THE ALLEY BETWEEN 13TH AND AVE M  
She frowned. That was the quickest route to school. What could possibly have caused this? With a grumble, she closed the software and shoved the tablet back into her satchel, remembering that she had received this update on several other occasions. She had also gotten one which had informed her that the alley was most likely a place she ought to avoid in general. Of course, this only made her want to explore it further, but what kind of fool didn’t follow her own advice? With her feet pit- patting along the damp pavement, Camdyn Layne took a left at 12th and marched all the way to Avenue K before hurrying though Republic Park and rushing through the doors of the 14th Municipal Education Center where she spent the majority of her days.  
Recite, recite, recite. Camdyn knew, as all in her class did, nearly every statute and every regulation of Republic Law. In dull, uninterested monotone, the class recited the Statutes of Public Transportation, droning on and on about standardized bus schedules and proper behavior when using the Republic’s “fine accommodations.” As always, the class, standing pridelessly straight and rigid, completed the oral exam by reiterating for the trillionth time the Pledge of Allegiance to the Blessed Republic:  
Blessed Republic, benefactor of the Survivors of the Great Cataclysm, both mother and father to all the grateful citizens, lover of the obedient, crusher of the rebellious, to you we pledge our allegiance. To you we pledge our very lives, in return for the life with which you have endowed us. May our every breath reflect the love and admiration by which we cherish you in our hearts and from which we draw the hope and vigor to serve.  
Camdyn Layne’s mouth formed the words. Her throat thrummed with the vibration of sound. Her teeth executed sharp consonants with practiced precision and her tongue rolled soft ones with nearly autonomous accuracy. But she said nothing. Having spoken the words so often and with such a lack of sincerity, they were merely sounds. Merely noises. Merely vibration. She knew that each of her classmates felt just the same way, but it was subconscious. So deep down. Swallowed and suppressed for their entire lives. A tiny spark of youth that would be quenched in adulthood.  
That is why Camdyn Layne had so desperately loved her father, with his thick black hair and his grin like the caged- lights in the barracks hallways: bright, but guarded and flickering. He had never forgotten his youthful indignation for injustice. Never lost that unperverted verve. Always remembered who he was, an individual set apart from the conglomeration of gray that oozed slowly from occupations to barracks each day. Unquestioning. Heads down. Eyes blank. Indoctrinated and deceived.  
Deceived.  
That had been the last word that Marcus Layne Alethea had ever uttered to his beloved daughter.  
“They are deceived, Cam, to think that they are happy and well. Utterly deceived.”  
It was a word Camdyn dared not breathe a syllable of. She no longer asked her instructor questions during class. She merely held them in her heart. She no longer lovingly challenged her mother, as her father had, when the dear woman accepted the Republic’s statements as facts. She merely questioned them in her mind. It was difficult not to have Father around to guide her. He had been nearly everything to her.  
Life continues, blind to loss and gain, to failure and success, to war and peace, Camdyn thought cryptically, shuddering and starting to attention in her small desk, made from galvanized pipe framing and crowned with a neoplasticine desk- top. She dug into her messenger- bag, which was slung over the back of her chair, drew out her standard- issue information tablet, and set it in the appointed slot on the far edge of the desk, where it fit upright, allowing her to take notes or to further research legal documents. Each one of the clear, carbon- compound slates— which resembled window- panes removed from their frames— was uploaded with a complete set of the Blessed Republic’s Statutes and Regulations for the enjoyment and study of the citizens of the Metropolis. It was also the only way for Camdyn to access her Behavioral Reports and Personal Timeline Updates, both of which were well- monitored by the Republic Officials and essential to her understanding of how far she was permitted to push the limits on a day- to- day basis. With a sigh, she opened her word processing program and began to compose a well- informed thesis on the effects of Behavioral Re- Education on the overall economy of the Republic. Well- informed but completely disgenuine.  
While Camdyn completed the assignment, the instructor began a lecture on the Civil Duty of elder citizens to further the approved education of the youth at home, specifically the duty of elder siblings to their younger ones, in the case of the standard family unit. Camdyn allowed herself a small smile. She had a younger sibling, five years her junior. During the pregnancy, Mr. Alethea had become convinced that the fetus was male and named it Jaxon Jay Alethea and had filled out all the legal paperwork early in order to prove his certainty. Jaxon had been born babbling, healthy, and beautiful— but a girl. The family was unable to edit the legalities of the name, so they merely nicknamed the child Jaxi. Camdyn loved Jaxi dearly and agreed wholeheartedly that it was her civil duty to educate the child at home— as her father had done for her— but not necessarily in the approved curriculum. She read to Jaxi from her father’s books of ancient philosophy, detailing the logic of Descartes and the Romanticism of John Locke. Well, Camdyn conceded with a frown, not Locke any longer. After her first session with Jaxi on Locke, the book had vanished. Camdyn supposed that Surveillance had put out an emergency Behavioral Report for the confiscation of the text. Camdyn was surprised that the book had been accessible to her for this long, anyhow. The Republic disapproved of books sternly.  
Looking left and right, Camdyn closed out all the programs on her information tablet and left it blank in its slot. She then reached down into her satchel again and pulled out something that would have been a surprise to her classmates if they had noticed. A notebook and a pen. Relics of a bygone era, filled with data inaccessible to the Republic’s Cybersystematic Authorities. Plain and simple ink on paper. Camdyn Layne’s grandfather, Lawrence Armánd Alethea, had made fifty notebooks. He had been an Agricultural District citizen, overseeing a rather large corn plantation several hundred miles West of the Metropolis, along with a meager apportionment of chattel. He’d had access to the dead trees of the Agricultural Districts and a wide span of tools at his disposal. He had pulped the paper himself, tanned the leather covers from the skins of his own livestock, and sewn them together with hair from his own horse’s tails. In that time, the Agricultural District was under much less invasive Republic Surveillance, as the technology needed to keep such an expansive, sprawling stretch of land had not yet been perfected. There had been Surveillance Outposts with regular check- ins, but little else. Hence, Camdyn’s grandfather, a much freer man than Camdyn’s father, had had a much more rich life than she had ever known. Nearer to the end of Grandfather Lawrence’s life, he was sent to the Metropolis to fill a menial factory job until what was left of his strength failed him. He had left all the blank notebooks to Marcus Layne Alethea, upon whose disappearance they passed to Camdyn. The pen, also a family heirloom, was an electric one with a core that heated up and a tip that gently singed the paper black where it was put down.  
Having been raised by a free thinker, Camdyn was of the flavor of individual who expressed Opinions. This was a dangerous practice, despite the fact that the Republic Officials did encourage the expression of Approved Opinions. All those expressing Opinions other than Approved Opinions would have their Behavioral Report adjusted and would be sent to Re- Education. However, Camdyn knew that the surveillance team was not able to access her notebooks unless they took them by force. In fact, they had managed to nab several blank ones from their cubicle in the barracks before Camdyn noticed and began to lug the whole lot of them around with her in her messenger- bag. There were two that were filled by grandfather, one she had managed to salvage that Father had filled, two that she had filled, and seven blank ones. That meant twelve notebooks weighing mightily on her shoulder every time she left a building. Twelve notebooks that were very precious to her. Filled with the immeasurable. The uncontainable. The weight of thought that left a bruise where her bag’s strap hung from her thin frame. That was why she lugged them hither and thither every day and wrote in them when she could. It was her own, tiny spark of rebellion.  
And so she ignored the instructor until the unpleasant howl of the twelfth- hour alarm cut through the eerily silent Metropolis. The students shuffled mindlessly from their desks and out the door of the Education Center, turning in the various directions of their barracks to amble unconsciously away. Camdyn waited outside the door of her own Education Center, glancing up the street towards the 5th Municipal Education Center, where her sister’s class was flooding out, a wave of giggles and runnings- about, shouts and hoots and squeals ringing from every ripple and curl. Camdyn smiled. They had not been ruined yet, had they? She walked up the street, still smiling solemnly and approached the tempestuous storm of five- year- olds, tended by a team of five nursemaids with heads shaved and torsos draped with grey canvas aprons. Camdyn dug out a small black card and handed it to the nearest nursemaid who then nodded and fished Jaxi from the oscillating horde of tiny, writhing bodies. Camdyn took the card and Jaxi’s hand, then set off back down the street. After several minutes, she glanced down at the tiny girl.  
“How was your day, Jaxi?” she inquired softly.  
Jaxi’s enormous, pale eyes met hers, and her round cheeks revealed crater- like dimples as she smiled in reply.  
“Good,” was all she said. “’Bout you, Cammin?”  
Camdyn’s heart warmed at the endearing mispronunciation. Jaxi had always struggled with more than one consonant at a time, and Camdyn dreaded the day on which she would grow up enough to say it right.  
“A bit dull, really,” she told the bright- eyed child. “I think big- kid school is less fun.”  
Jaxi nodded.  
“Too bad,” she murmured, furrowing her little brow in the classic Alethea way.  
They walked in contented silence before Jaxi continued.  
“Today, we learned ‘bout a Kattliskm,” she stated proudly.  
Camdyn stopped short. The Cataclysm?! They had moved the history lesson on the Cataclysm from 10th year to 9th year to 8th year in the past half- decade, but to teach it to the 5th year students? This was ludicrous! It was far too violent and terrible a catastrophe to be recounting to small children! She knelt down, taking Jaxi’s arms in her hand with assertive gentleness, and looking straight into her eyes.  
“What did they tell you about the Cataclysm, Jaxi?”  
Jaxon Jay Alethea could tell that this was a very serious matter. Her big sister had knelt down like that to explain how Papa wouldn’t be coming home anymore, and to explain how Momma had a sick heart and couldn’t play anymore. Her tiny mouth went dry as she struggled earnestly to recall every detail.  
“Long time ‘go,” she began carefully, “dere was no Perublic.”  
Camdyn listened to her sister’s account of the Cataclysm. She was glad to discover that it had been slightly edited for young minds, but she was still frustrated. Although the history lesson was built from fact, it was a mere vehicle for propaganda. Blessed Republic. Benevolent Republic. Savior of the People. All of that rubbish. As Jaxi finished her tale, Camdyn sighed slightly.  
“So,” she said, trying to make her speech sound like her father’s, “what does it mean?”  
Jaxi was used to the question. Papa had always asker her, and now Cammin did it in his absence. She huffed a little, indignant breath, nonetheless. Thinking was a difficult task.  
“It means…” she began, hesitantly, then stopped. “It doesn’t mean that the Perublic is always right.”  
Camdyn beamed. It was a start, although she felt that Jaxi may be just as brainwashed as all the other children in her class. At least she would eventually have the opportunity to perfect the art of thought. It would be a useful tool when she was older. She stood back up and took the younger girl’s hand once again, resuming their trek back to the barracks. She loved her sister dearly and was terrified that the Republic would take her mind and destroy, defile it, it as the Republic had done to the thousands of citizens who swarmed around her. As she walked, she recounted to herself the Epoch of the Cataclysm as her father had always told it.  
There was once a time, an age long lost, nearly forgotten, in which humanity was enslaved. They were free. Being perfectly free to do whatever he chose, man was a slave to his darkness. To his insatiability. To his greed and pride and hate and lust and to every other droplet of ink that could stain the ledger of his morality. Back then, there were different sorts of man. There were men, beast- herders, who lived with their families in the mountains and the snow, enduring harsh, eight- month winters out of pure tradition and love for the life their ancestors had passed down to them. There were men who lived at the edge of the desert, looking in and appreciating that they were safe from it’s hateful aridity. There were men who lived in the scorching belly of the desert, thriving on the oil they found there, not bothering with those who complained about the heat and the sweat and the sun when they visited. There were men who loved their wives. There were men who only took cream in their coffee. There were men who wanted children. There were men who wanted solitude. Each and every one of them sought what they wanted. They reached out and grasped it with all their might and pulled it tightly to their chests.  
There were different sorts of thinking, then, as well. Some men thought that everyone ought to earn what he got, save for those desperate few for whom the rest would care. Some men thought that everyone ought to do what he could and give to his neighbor, even if his neighbor didn’t deserve it. Some men thought that there should be many men in charge and some men thought that there should be as few in charge as possible.  
Can you see, Camdyn? Can you see how free and how enslaved they were? Not any single one of them wanted to do harm to any of the others, but they often forgot that there is no perfect man. Those who thought that earning was best forgot that sometimes people need a bit more help than that to which they are entitled. Those who thought that community giving was best forgot that sometimes not everyone in the community was motivated or self- disciplined enough to contribute. There was too much trust in humanity, even while there was not enough at all. The different kinds of people began to argue about what was best. They squabbled and argued, spitting out data and statistics as though they were great, glittering fountains of knowledge, when they were really not much more than the flow in a muddy street- gutter after a light rain. In their suits and their ties and their pearl cufflinks, they fought. They called upon their armies. They called upon their people. The men who had finally achieved their solitude marched step for step alongside the men who had finally had children, and they all went to war. All as alive and as afraid as the next. All as dead as the stones on which they trod.  
There was one sort of man that understood that a great fire was coming, in which the peoples of the world would utterly destroy themselves. So they built great, enormous domes in the bottom of the seas. They took families — men, women, and children — into the domes and they put them to sleep. The Cryogenic Sleep was a brand- new technology, and it killed thousands of the people. But some survived. A choice few, strong of will and body, slept through age after age, waiting for the earth to be clean again. And it did. They brought their families and their gardens and their livestock from the artificial atmosphere of the Dome in the Depths and into the regenerated atmosphere of the earth. They sowed their seeds and bred their livestock and replenished the earth as best they could, quarreling as seldom as they could manage and showing love to one another as equals.  
Then, one dark day, a man accused another of robbery. The accused denied this allegation and the accuser stood, indignant. They fought, and the accused let the blood of his accuser spill, angry and wounded by his claim. The men of the community turned to the eldest of them all, and his wisdom gave birth to the First Statutes and Regulations. The community lived happily by the statutes for many years, appointing a Council of Officials and establishing an official justice system. By this first court and police force, the Republic was born. It grew, shaped itself into what we see today. The Statutes and Regulations swarmed in from every horizon, filling in cracks made by human error, covering every transgression and making each new one more difficult to commit, until… The Perfection was discovered. The Perfection was given to each and every citizen of the Republic, and they succumbed to it. It permeated every inch of their lives, from waking until sleeping, then from sleeping until waking again. All they had to do was allow it to govern them. To succumb to its ultimate authority. They abided perfectly by every Statute and by every Regulation, teaching them to their children and instructing them on the proper employment of The Perfection. Our society has thrived ever since, but as The Perfection lives on, the people are choked by it. Our very nature is one of blackness and rebellion. To deny it is to change a human into something else, entirely, Camdyn. Something else, entirely.  
But, what, Dad?  
Camdyn started to attention. Jaxi was tugging on the long sleeve of her fleece- lined canvas coat, staring up at her impatiently and with a small measure of concern.  
“Doin’ okay?” she murmured, still staring and tugging.  
Camdyn glanced up to survey her surroundings. She had been on auto- pilot long enough to reach the barrack gates. She fished her black Citizen Identification Card from her pocket and swept it over the scanner. With an unwelcoming electric buzz, the gate’s bolt sprung from its catch, allowing Camdyn to open it and draw Jaxi through. The buzzing continued, urging Camdyn to close the gate behind her firmly, only relenting when the bolt clicked back into its catch, a sound that was one of the few Camdyn actually enjoyed. Somehow, the sound of parts fitting together was a pleasant one. It told her that there was some controllable order in the world, that she could find a place to fit and slide smoothly into it.  
The barracks were divided genetically by Health Class. People with similar hair and eye colors were encouraged to reproduce and to enroll their offspring into the education system. There were increasingly more unclaimed children in the education system, as commitment to sexual partners was something that Republic Officials discouraged. In fact, strong emotions of nearly any kind were not considered beneficial nor acceptable by the Republic Officials. There were still family units in the barracks, but there were primarily single adults who moved from cubicle to cubicle on a nightly basis, giving their children over to be cared for by the Republic’s Trained Nursemaids. Camdyn often felt that the Republic disapproved of anything that seemed to be the most human of humanity’s traits.  
As Camdyn led Jaxi through the barracks, she surveyed them carefully, everything falling under her ever- watchful eye as she clasped Jaxi protectively. Each Class was surrounded by high metal gates and fences, made of rods with barbed tips. The concrete buildings— square, solid, and practical— lined the outside of the fenced- in area, and at the center was a small amphitheater housing a large screen by which Republic Officials would often give speeches. Everything was gray. Gray and stony. Stony, square, and as purely utilitarian as could be. Nearly as lifeless as the people who dwelled there.  
Building Seven, Hall Fourteen, Cubicle Two. Camdyn had always loved the fact that her address was a number family. She loved patterns in numbers and in words. Fractions and decimals and meters and rhymes.  
What is a man if he isn’t himself?  When defined by his body, defined by his health,  
Camdyn scanned her Citizen Identification Card on the cubicle door’s lock.  
Not defined by his actions nor thoughts in his head, Is he a new beast or an old one long dead?  
She pulled her sister into the two- room living space.  
He’s more than a form; so much more than his weight, Understanding. Decisions. Responses to Fate.  
She pushed the door shut behind her and looked around the familiar room.  
What is a man when man is no more? Is he greater or lesser than he was before?  
She dropped her satchel on the floor, which was covered in an immense, handmade braided rug, an eternally unfinished project that started in the sleeping quarters, filled the room, and curled its way into the common area, stopping just short of the far wall, where a kitchenette jutted awkwardly into the room. Camdyn’s grandmother, Lucille Alethea, had begun the rug when she and Grandpa Lawrence were still living in the Agricultural District and had brought it along with her when they’d moved. It was made from any and every old fabric scrap the small family could find. Torn jackets, worn- down sheets, threadbare towels, irreparable socks, and the extra seven inches off of the bottom of the curtains in the common room’s single, small window. Beneath the braided rug was a cushy layer of empty rye meal sacks, as each family was rationed a certain number of 5- kilo sacks at the beginning of each month. Republic Officials returned meager number of Trading Credits in exchange for the citizens’ returning of the coarse, burlap sacks, but the citizens of the metropolis found them much more useful in keeping their feet as far away from the frigid concrete floors of the barrack’s cubicles as possible. Some people even unwove the burlap to its finest fibers, rewound those fibers into an almost silky thread, and wove linens from them. Camdyn’s mother had been one such woman. Janicelle Monique Alethea, wife of Marcus Layne Alethea, and therefore Camdyn and Jaxi’s mother, had once built herself a workable loom and a small trade in the barracks. She had offered double the Official’s return price for the burlap and had traded linen for the family’s extra needs. But, after the disappearance of her husband, she had retreated to the sleeping quarters; an invalid. Sick at heart. The work had passed to Camdyn, who not only wove, but now sewed. She took orders from expectant mothers for slings and blankets— commodities not doled out by the Republic Officials— as well as thickened standard- issue jackets with extra lining and insulation. She had even managed to develop a sort of a yarn by mixing in the processed stuffing from old mattresses and sold skeins of it for cans of furnace oil, extra rye meal, as well as olive oil and powered milk when she could, in order to keep up her mother’s strength.  
Besides the hodge- podge braided rug, The room had a few humble furnishings. If one was standing in the doorway and looked to the right, one would see the little kitchenette, with running water, a glossy, black electric stovetop; a steel- clad larder about as tall as Jaxi and as wide as Papa’s chest; several cramped cupboards full of glass and neoplasticine bowls; steel pots and pans; and a small, uniform set of dishes per family member. In the corner, the family had tucked a small, four- person table, with legs made from industrial piping and a bare sheet of thick neoplasticine for the top surface, which they had gotten as scrap from a friend in the Plastics Production Plant. In the center of the common area was a large bench, which was a square facing in on itself, each side just long enough to fit two people, fashioned from a false, manufactured wood that had a dark, almost purplish tone. There was one like it in each cubicle, varying in size with the size of the inhabiting party. There was a tiny furnace raised off of the floor in the center of the square of the bench, which could run on coal, oil, or electricity, depending on what was available. On the wall hung an Information Database Tablet: an enlarged and more intensive information tablet that rang out and gave the inhabiting party Official Statute Updates, weather warnings, and Mass Timeline Updates. In the corner opposite the table, sat the spidery, makeshift loom, surrounded by baskets and crates of burlap, thread, linen, and small tools. On the far left and just along the wall from the loom, was a little doorway filled by a gray canvas curtain, which led to the sleeping quarters. In this room, her father’s bookcases filled one wall, but were not completely filled by volumes, and several sleeping mats were rolled up in the corner, except her mothers, whose was now always rolled out and occupied.  
Camdyn, helping Jaxi to clamber over the back of the bench before moving over to the kitchenette, began to hum as she floated about the cubicle. She pulled out a small, silvery pot and set it on the stovetop, flicking the dial around to light the ring of red just below the glassy surface. She poured a half ration of rye meal into a glass bowl, then a half- cup of water in after it. After swishing and stirring the rye meal for a good three or four minutes, she drained the now milky- white liquid into a the pot, leaving the grains behind. She pulled several sprigs of linen- wrapped herbs from an overhead cupboard and tossed them into the pot, finally capping it with its accompanying lid. She then measured out another ration and a half, adding them to a separate pot with the stirred grains. She then poured in the correct amount of water and set it to simmer slowly behind the pot of liquid and herbs. After the milky, cloudy rye tea had warmed, she stirred in several teaspoons of powdered milk and poured it into the black mug with the white, patched crack. She dug through a drawer to find the deep spoon for soups and broths, then dropped it into the mug. With a deep breath, she plucked it off the concrete counter and stepped with false confidence into the sleeping quarters.  
Momma lay on her sleeping mat, surrounded with scrap quilts and extra coats and whatever burlap sacks that Camdyn could spare. Her mat was doubled in thickness with Papa’s mat underneath, which he obviously did not use any longer, and Momma was leaned against the wall, unable to keep herself upright by her own strength. By her side was a small, overturned crate that served as a side table, and on this Camdyn set the mug of rye tea. There was a book, a dark red volume with gold pages and a spine declaring The Writings of Spinoza in thick, golden letters, pushed to the edge of the crate. This made Camdyn frown. She had put the book there, as she did with a new book every morning when she brought her mother breakfast, but she had put it just where Momma could reach it. It must have taken great effort to push it away, but the message to Camdyn was clear: nothing was going to liven Momma’s spirits. Not if Momma didn’t want them livened. She looked over her mother, who was rarely conscious at this time of day. Her most active times were dawn and dusk: all other hours were ones of sleep. She seemed more pale than when Camdyn had left. Hair graying, lips chapped, cloudy- gray skin. Camdyn loved her mother dearly, but it was difficult to see her like this. Drawing in a fresh breath to gather her senses, she knelt down and rubbed her mother’s arm to rouse her. The poor woman’s eyes flickered open and shut, a dusty sigh escaping her disused throat.  
“Momma,” Camdyn whispered softly. “Time to take your tea.”  
The older woman groaned slightly, and strained to lift her head forward from the pillow, allowing Camdyn to slip another one behind it. Dutifully, Camdyn took the mug and the spoon and gently administered the tea, sip by sip, until it was all gone. Momma obediently took the bitter liquid, knowing that Camdyn would not let her go back to sleep until it was finished. Afterwards, she gently slid the extra pillow from behind Momma’s head and eased her backward.  
“I love you, Momma,” she said softly, solemnly.  
The reply was, as ever, silence.  
Camdyn stepped back into the common area, where Jaxi had quietly drawn a chair from the table and was standing on it, bending over the pot of rye meal on the stove. Camdyn smiled. Jaxi was a well- trained girl. If the pot bubbles before Cammin finishes giving Momma her evening tea, it is Jaxi’s job to turn off the stove and stir the supper until Cammin is done. Camdyn had made her repeat the instruction at least a thousand times, and had watched Jaxi perform the task under her supervision at least a thousand more. Now, it was a normality. Camdyn was even considering teaching her sister to measure the rye meal and water.  
As Camdyn strode over, Jaxi smiled with a small hint of pride that she had once again dutifully completed her task,  
“Thanks, Jax,” Camdyn said, setting the mug and spoon in the sink. “You hungry?”  
“Ye- es!” Jaxi said loudly, then, glancing nervously at the sleeping- quarters’ curtain, repeated herself softly under her breath.  
“Too bad,” teased Camdyn softly, grinning, “it’s aaaallllll for me.”  
A tiny, indignant gasp escaped Jaxi’s round mouth and she crossed her arms in frustration.  
“No, Cammin. Me, too.”  
Camdyn picked Jaxi up and zoomed her onto the bench, all the while softly singing “mine, mine, all mine,” under her breath. Jaxi jumped up from the back of the bench and onto her sister’s back, startling her and toppling her backwards over the smooth wooden surface. They had a good, hearty romp, almost resulting in actual squeals and shrieks, but they managed to keep a lid on the noise. After a while of just lying along the seat of the bench, giggling softly, Camdyn dragged herself over to the stove to stir in some powdered milk and various herbs. They ate, cleaned the dishes, and put everything back in its proper place. By the time they finished, it was nearly the third hour of dusk. After taking Jaxi to the public bathrooms to wash up and get ready for bed, Camdyn put her on her sleeping mat, beside the doll she’d made for her when Jaxi was just a tiny infant.  
Camdyn read to her sister from a book of essays. This essay was part of a pamphlet called Common Sense by a man called Thomas Paine. “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong,” she read slowly and reverently, “gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides…” She read like this for about twenty minutes, knowing full well that Jaxi Jay absorbed very little of it. But it was good for her. For Jaxi and for Camdyn alike. It reminded the girls of Papa and reminded Camdyn that she was a human being and that there were things in the world to think about. After she had finished a rather lengthy passage, she took down a different book and opened it to a page where the binding had been snapped. There was an illustration there of a meadow. Green and luscious and full of wildflowers, beneath a sapphire sky and a warm, golden sun surrounded by soft, wispy clouds. It was so strange to think about the World Before. So strange to think that there had once been a time that people thought differently from one another. A time when things grew on their own. Camdyn, lost in thought as she stared at the image, suddenly became aware that her sister was rubbing her eyes with her tiny fists. With a loving smile, Camdyn shut the book and began to sing, weaving a story with her voice in that distant, minor tone that had suited her father’s baritone voice so well.  
Night is coming, silent, fast, Sneaking swift behind the Day, Waiting for the perfect chance, To best the day and take his place.  
He crouches low behind a tree, Waiting til the Day holds still, Then he pounces, valiantly, And bends the Day to his own will.  
Bright Day struggles, grapples, brawls, Straining to resist Dark Night, But waning strength makes him to fall,  Night deals a blow with all his might.  
Day runs off into the woods. Night steps up to take his place, Showing that he’s kind and good, With moon and stars and milky way.  
So close your eyes and you will see, If the Day returns by morn, To best the Night, to make him flee,  And take his place on high once more.  
Jaxi’s breathing had slowed to dreamlike tempo, so Camdyn leaned down and kissed her forehead, then stood to make her way through the door. As she turned, she beheld a tall, dark figure blocking her way, silhouetted against the light from the kitchen. Camdyn leapt back and stifled a scream. The figure did not move. The figure did not breathe. The figure did not speak. And neither did Camdyn. Finally, an unnaturally deep, almost mechanical voice cut the silence.  
“Music, Citizen Number 112795, is henceforth prohibited in the Metropolis. You will not continue to sing as part of your evening ritual any longer. Is there any confusion as to this Behavioral Expectation Update?”  
Camdyn’s increased heart rate, which had been initially one of fear, quickened to one of indignation.  
“It does no harm!” she snapped in a breathy whisper, astonished that the voice had not roused her mother nor her sister. “Why can’t I? Why shouldn’t I?!”  
The figure did not make reply for several seconds.  
“The question is not valid,” it intoned, finally.  
“Not valid?” hissed Camdyn Layne Alethea, “of course it’s valid!”  
“The question,” it repeated, slower this time, its terrifyingly low pitch resonating in Camdyn’s own chest with every syllable, “is not valid.”  
And it was gone.  
Camdyn jumped, equally as disturbed by its sudden disappearance as she had been its sudden appearance. Her pulse thrumming rapidly in her ears, she stepped through the curtains of the doorway and glanced frantically around the common area. Nothing. Terrifying, crazing, disturbing nothingness. Nothingness that was the most Something that Camdyn had ever felt.  
Am I going crazy? Camdyn thought to herself, as she shod her dress, made her way over to the bench, and curled up in a corner of it beneath her coat.  
I certainly hope not. I’m all Jax and Momma have.  
And it was the truth.

CHAPTER TWO  
For things we want we often pray, But in the night is love for day. How can we love the soft and warm, If we’ve never braved a storm?  
From somewhere deep in the Fourth Agricultural District, a steel pickaxe struck stone with a resounding clang. The shoulders of the pickaxe’s bearer, of a much darker complexion that any skin one would find in the Metropolis, ached and burned under the heat of the sun and the pang of exhaustion. With a grunt of resolve, the bearer let the heavy steel pick drop into the pile of dust and gravel at his feet and tip to knock its handle against the wheelbarrow at his side. He leaned against the boulder at which he had been chipping away for hoursXRMX, panting and groaning slightly. He was not exceptionally tall, nor exceptionally broad, but he was well- built. Hardened by physical labor. His hair, which was shorn in the classic close- shave of the Republic, was thick and black, and obviously grew much faster than he would like it to. His face was darkened by the absence of a razor, creating a shadow across his angular jaw that was as dark and as thick as the hair on his head. As he stood, he tugged uncomfortably at the tracking device locked onto his left arm, knowing that if he tried to remove it, its microscopic buried needles would pump him full of a slow- working lethal injection. He scowled at the piercing sunlight, bringing a broad, brown, and calloused hand over his eyes to shade them. From the relieving darkness of his hand’s shade, his eyes blazed a brilliant shade of golden- green that seemed to almost swirl and churn as though they were made from molten metal. The Agrarian looked up at the sky, roughly judging the hour, and with the sleeves torn from his gray, sweat- drenched shirt, he gripped the handle of the pickaxe once more and continued pounding at the boulder.  
It was, in fact, not a boulder. It was a massive geode of Xenaxticite crystals, a mineral which was essential to many of the developmental projects of the labs and factories in the Metropolis. It was liquefied and added to glass and neoplasticine blends, to strengthen them and give them a sort of shine. It was granulated and used to fortify concrete and to extend the life of a lump of manufactured coal and to polish various types of metal. It was even used in several types of drugs and vaccines to aid in rapid absorption to the bloodstream. It was a highly valuable mineral and was commonly found in boulder- sized geodes in the mountains above the Fourth Agricultural District. Twice monthly, the Guardsmen of the District sent willing volunteers up into the mountains, sporting bulky tracking devices, to find the geodes, break them open, and haul the raw crystal back to the village for development and shipping. This particular Agrarian was called Alces Louis Fluminis, eldest of three brothers, and had seen not much more than twenty- five winters. He was well- browned, even for an Agrarian, and had a genial way about him. Swoosh- *whack*, swoosh- *whack*, swoosh- *whack*. The pickaxe swung and struck, swung and struck, swung and struck as he heaved it high above his head and back down onto the enormous geode. After a grand total of twenty minutes of hacking away at the gigantic, spherical stone, an earsplitting *CRACK* shot through the mountain range as the geode fell neatly in two halves.  
Alces grinned. This one was well- matured. Two masses of extremely pale pink, translucent crystal lumped on either side of the split geode, glittering and refracting the sunlight into his already stinging eyes. Sighing with relief, he dragged his forearm across his glistening forehead, leaving a streak of gray dust behind, and began to use the pickaxe to hack off large chunks of the crystal and deposit them into the wheelbarrow. When he’d filled the rusty wheelbarrow with enormous hunks of the mineral, he began to chip away at the edges of the geode and to fill the spaces in between the larger pieces with tiny ones. After doing this, he then filled every pocket on his thick, canvas cargo pants and removed his shirt to knot a nearly infant- sized mass of chips inside it, which he then hung on his belt. Weighed down like had never been before, Alces jammed the handle of the pickaxe between to chunks of the dense Xenaxticite crystal so that it stuck up into the air at a jaunty angle, wobbling only slightly as he made his way down the stony mountain path back towards the camp.  
It was slow- going, and Alces had to stop to draw from the canteen at his belt on more than one occasion, but the young Agrarian eventually arrived at the camp. He weighed his mass of crystals and was paid with two sacksful of raw rye and a wooden box full of iron nails, which had become the unofficial, yet universally accepted, currency of the Fourth Agricultural District. He thanked the Officials, filled his canteen, donned his dusty shirt, and sat down on a bench beneath the only awning in the area to wait for both of his brothers to return. His first brother, Marco, was a mere year his junior, and his younger one, Jensen, was a short time less than five years his junior. They were both hardworking boys, as was Alces, and he loved them dearly.  
As the pale, bright sky became a pale, dusky purple, and as the few stars which were still visible through the marred atmosphere emerged, the final three or four workers came trickling down the mountain, pushing barrows only half- full and bearing disappointed and exhausted faces. His fellow workers, two of which were his brothers, scowled at Alces’s great luck as they walked past him and went to weigh in. He had been quite lucky, and he knew it. Scarcely did a Xenaxticite worker fill much more than three- fourths of his wheelbarrow, as mature geodes were a genuine rarity. This, however, was the seventh time in three months that one of the Fluminis boys had struck it rich, and the rest of the Xenaxticite workers resented this greatly.  
Soon, the grumbling, tired lot of sun- browned men— and one young girl who had always come on every dig and had always earned a respectable amount, much to the surprise of the others— was packed tightly into the uncovered back of an old cargo truck and driven off in the direction of the village, bumping and jumping over unfilled ruts and uncleared stones that littered the unpaved roadway. Despite their hard day’s work, they were all standing, closely shoved up against one another, which made for an excruciatingly long forty- minute ride back to the village square. The night sky swooshed briskly by overhead, and each of the Xenaxticite workers kept his— and her— face turned up toward the fresh air. Soon, Alces caught himself humming. It was one of the many traditional tunes that the people of the Dome passed down to those who would be working to replenish the earth, long before the enjoyment of music was suppressed by the overbearingly invasive Republic Behavioral Surveillance. Alces was a lover of these forbidden notes, and almost always sang or hummed on the way back to camp, because, as the night wind rushed by overhead, it carried his rolling voice far away back to the mountains, keeping it from the ears of the Guardsmen in the cockpit of the cargo truck. He continued humming, a pleasantly deep minor key that rolled forward and back, swirling naturally from rapid to crawling, from light and feathery to rich and strong as stone, just as the world had been before the Cataclysm. Full of diversity. Soft moss and gently rustling ferns that grew around mighty oaks and vines with razor- sharp thorns. Softly rolling grasses that led gradually up to firmly founded mountains. Birds with delicate, velvety feathers that met their wicked, curved beaks. Bears with lush, fluffy coats that met their pointed, jagged claws. A world full of contradiction and variety, which had been reduced to poisoned water and ashen wasteland. All hard. All stony. All dangerous and violent and wicked and sharp. 

CHAPTER THREE  
The comfort we seek in the normal, mundane, Is merely pacific to that less than sane. By usual routine, we’re much less than saved, To be healed, we must address the depraved.  
From birth, the citizens of the Republic were engineered to obey. The Republic Officials performed feats of social, economic, and physiological engineering far beyond the skill, capacity, or scale of any of the eras behind them, and one such feat was the relationship created between the citizens and sleep. In the cradle, complex, rhythmic neohypnotic techniques, developed by early Republic neuroscientists and psychologists alike, involving patterns of light in various colors and tempos, drew the infant citizens into sleep at just the appointed time. And not just any sleep. Dead sleep. The crops of infants, after having been put to sleep, were stimulated with a constant alarm tone throughout the night, which created a sort of inhibitor of increased brain function. Hence, the citizens of the Republic did not dream. The body was trained to sleep in a completely comatose state and did so for the entirety of its life. There had not been a dream reported in over thirty- eight years and the certain Mr. Aximmon — officially, citizen Number 000376 — was sent into the Re- Education program and came out a veritable vegetable. Sleep was no escape for the citizens of the Republic. It was merely an extension of the Republic Official’s control. Barely a time of peace. Stiff, cold, and reminiscent of death. Barely a time of rest.  
Camdyn Layne awoke to the invasive, chirping alarm that she had set on her information tablet. She dragged herself off of the bench and over to her satchel, on the floor by the entryway, and rooted through it until she found and deactivated it. She sighed heavily, rubbing her eyes and stretching. She always woke up so sore. Still in her standard- issue gray linen undershirt and shorts, she grabbed a threadbare towel from a cupboard in the kitchen and headed out the door , barefooted, key card in hand, to the public bathrooms. There was a great line of showers all along the wall in the female sector, to which she drowsily made her way. There were only a few other citizens awake at this hour, so Camdyn did her best to find a shower as far away from any of them as she could. Soon, she was showered and refreshed, with her hair re- braided and her undergarments washed and dried. Now being much more alert, she trod slowly back down the gray hallway, with its concrete walls and floors that echoed even the tiniest sound of her feet padding against them. The pale, flickering caged lights which buzzed continuously overhead were spaced out in such a way that each individual pool of glaring light in the black hallway had a five foot expanse of pitch blackness between it and the next. The corridor seemed go on for miles, sealed off completely from the outside, and the perfectly uniform doors, each positioned perfectly in the darkness between patches of light, made Camdyn’s throat tighten, feeling as though she was walking in an infinite loop. Walking and not moving. Going nowhere.  
She was the sole inhabitant of the hallway, which was the penultimate entry on the list of ways the hallway was terrifying — the ultimate entry was being the sole inhabitant besides only one other, who would flash in and out of one’s vision as they crossed from one pool of light to another, only to disappear into a dark doorway. Camdyn always imagined someone waiting for her in one of the expanses of darkness, which were made all the darker by the white sting of the caged lights. Camdyn shuddered and pressed on, counting the unmarked doors as she went. Her cubicle was the second from the main entrance, and consequently at the complete opposite end of Building Seven from the bathrooms. Having walked from her room in a state that could barely be considered consciousness, she had not experienced the quickened heart rate that she now did, as she make the trek back. As she tiptoed, she recalled her father’s voice.  
The world is a cold and vast one, Cam. It does not consider us for long. It barely feels our footsteps and barely hears our breaths. We are not vast. We are infinitesimal. If we don’t care for one another, then why bother caring at all?  
She shuddered once again, attempting to shake off the discomforting thought. Her father had always had a habit of making something seem much worse, yet better, both at once. He had always wrapped everything in enigma and thought, coaxing Camdyn to think to get to his thoughts. To probe and dig through his verbiage to find his message. Camdyn suddenly realized that from the very day she could understand his words, he had been shaping her. Teaching her to use the mind she was born with. Shaping her as efficiently as the Republic had shaped every other citizen in its care.  
The metallic click of the lock opening brought Camdyn back to herself. She had been on auto- pilot again, and the door to her cubicle swung open before her. Today was the seventh day of the week, the only day in which the citizens were allowed a small measure of rest. The Education Centers were closed, and all the factories and production plants ran on half their usual staff; half of the workers in the morning and the other half in the evening. Hence, Camdyn did much more work today than on any other day. After quickly setting the morning’s rye meal rations to boil, Camdyn sat down on an overturned crate before her loom. Being very skilled at the art of weaving after many long hours of practice, Camdyn spun at a rate that surpassed even the speed at which her mother had once done it. In and out. Across and beneath. The rhythm was soothing to Camdyn, and brought her to a peaceful state of empty- mindedness. She was soon nearing the end of the long, neat sheet of gray fabric and was soon pulling the hundreds of tiny loops of thread from their hundreds of tiny hooks and carefully darning in the ends as she had seen her mother do countless times. Upon finishing, she folded the sheet and placed it on top of a bundle of other sheets that she had carefully nestled in another empty crate. She then rooted through a basket in the corner and brought out six neat skeins of the yarn that she had spun. Today, being the Seventh Day, was Market Day. After a long, exhausting morning of rousing, feeding, and caring for Jaxi and her mother, Camdyn stepped out the cubicle door, a rather disgruntled and sleepyheaded Jaxi Jay in tow, toting a crate full of her wares.  
The Marketplace was in the center of the Metropolis, in what one might call the city square. There were some vendors and stations set up, at which people could report their wares to be inventoried, or request wares on the inventory list. This aided in the solving of barter- system’s inconvenient necessitation of a double coincidence of wants. If wants were computerized and catalogued, then they were easier to match up. People milled back and forth, waiting to be asked about their wares, or seeking out a seller that they had just communicated with via tablet. Oddly enough, there were not very many groups of people in the Marketplace, despite the volume of bodies present. There was really no need for them to congregate, though, was there? They were all of one mind. Hence, they milled about as individuals. The Republic Officials were the most interesting to watch on Market Day. They would come down and trade for many meats and oils and spices that they did not receive on rations, then gather up all their bags and crates, send them off with a footrunner, and march over to the building on the North end of the Square. That building, never entered by any sort of person beside an Official, was a Sensory Projection Center. The Officials could go inside and lay down in the neural regulators and have any situation they wanted projected into their senses by the enormous, whirring machines. Camdyn had only seen the inside of such a building in pictures, during a lesson on the technological advances of the Republic. It was, quite frankly, a disgusting practice in which disgusting people lived out disgusting fantasies in their minds, but was hailed by the Republic as one of the most amazing and useful marvels of modern science. Camdyn watched the Officials around her as she walked past the Edible Wares Station, the Technological Wares Station, and the Services Station to arrive at the Home and Common Wares Station. After a short wait, Camdyn stepped up to the counter.  
“Browsing or editing the catalogue?” droned the tired Appraisal Official, not looking up from her information tablet.  
“I’d like to make an entry, please,” Camdyn replied carefully.  
“State your Citizen Identification Number,” she demanded, opening up a new file on her tablet.  
“112795,” Camdyn sighed, slamming down her crate.  
The woman glanced at it, then got up and laid out its contents.  
“Ten eight- yard sheets of linen, five skeins of yarn, and an infant and toddler sling usable up to thirty pounds,” Camdyn placed a hand on each of her wares as she informed the Appraisal Official of the nature of each.  
After several moments of inspection, the woman nodded and composed the entry into the database.  
“You may now access your entry in the Market Database, and browse the other entries,” the woman droned, obviously tired of saying the same, dull handful of phrases a thousand times a week. Camdyn nodded and, after gathering her wares back into her crate, stepped around several other potential traders to get into the open. She scanned the Marketplace for a while, until she spotted an empty concrete bench, about 150 yards slightly to her left. Still dragging Jaxi in her wake, she set out in the direction of the vacant seat. She had barely taken three steps, however, before being slammed into by another citizen who was carrying a crate, stocked with glass bottles full of some sort of translucent green liquid. He stumbled, dropping and breaking the crate and sending bottles bouncing across the pavement, several of which smashed and sprayed the street with their contents, which smelled of dirt and grass — an uncommon smell in the Metropolis.  
The boy swore and kicked carcass of the crate in frustration and worry. It was not often that mistakes happened in the Republic. Not with the Personal Timeline Update System in effect. But, occasionally a little slip- up went unnoticed and unaltered by the citizens involved. This was no such occasion. The boy, before even bothering to stoop and gather his spilled wares, whipped out his information tablet and began to compose an update. Camdyn watched him as he did. He was close to Camdyn in age, possibly a bit older, and his pale skin, characteristic of any and all Republic citizens, was shorn closer to his head on the sides than on the top. Despite the pallor of his skin and eyes, he had a strong jaw and a demeanor which emanated a certain confidence. Cockiness. Haughtiness, perhaps. But not in a stuffy, holier- than- thou way. It was more congenial than that. It was as though he offered you his services, which were, of course, excellent.  
As soon as he finished the update, he glanced over at Camdyn, who recoiled under his stare. She glanced down at Jaxi, who looked up into her sister’s face and frowned slightly. Camdyn turned back toward the boy and took a short breath.  
“I am so sorry,” she informed him “Honestly.”  
He shrugged.  
“Not as though it’s a big deal,” he drawled, the thickness of his Agricultural District lilt meeting Camdyn’s ears in a friendly, albeit strange tone.  
She nodded, then glanced about her at all the bottles that he was obviously not going to bother gathering.  
“What…. What is that?” she inquired, bending down to pick up a bottle that had skittered to a stop at her feet. She held it up to the light, peering through its sloshing and swirling viridescence in confusion. Green was not a color one saw often in the Metropolis.  
The boy grinned, his jovial pride doubling in the expression.  
“That’s a bottle o’ Do- Ya- Good,” he informed her, his drawl slurring his sentence into a barely intelligible blur of syllables.  
“…Do- You- Good?”  
“Some call it Verdant Tonic,” he continued without further prompting. “it’s an all- around healer and improver of health. My Gramma in Agricultural District Four makes it and sends me a crate to take to town every week on Market Day. Surveillance lets her cuz they know it’s real good for ya. Even confiscated a bottle for study once.”  
“Yes,” Camdyn murmured, still peering through the bottle at the medicinal fluid. “But what’s it made from?”  
The boy grinned. Camdyn supposed he must have moved to the Metropolis quite recently. All this grinning and drawling and whatnot.  
“Wouldn’t tell you if I knew, Miss.”  
She huffed and let the bottle drop to her side, still in her hand. She glanced around at the littered pavement, then back at the boy.  
“You really don’t plan do clean this up, do you?”  
“Why should I?” he deliberated “It never happened anyhow.”  
“Mmm…” Camdyn agreed, nodding. “Mind if I take some, then? Got a sick mum at home.”  
He shrugged, so Camdyn stuffed a bottle into her satchel and bent down to pick up two more.  
When she stood, she looked him in the eyes, not really sure what else to do. Finally, she figured she ought to thank him.  
“Many thanks,” she intoned carefully, minding her manners well.  
“The world’s a cold and vast one,” he said, smiling and beginning to walk off, he turned over his shoulder to continue. “If we don’t care about each other, then what’s there to care about?”  
Then he was lost in the crowd.  
Camdyn stood, rooted to the spot, her heart practically in her throat. That was from her father’s own lips! From his own journal! From his editorial on the treatment of our fellow man! She remained there, panting until she was jolted to reality by the realization that her sister was no longer at her side.  
“Jaxi?” Camdyn called, whipping around to check her near surroundings. “Jaxi?!”  
No, no, no, no, no! This can’t be happening! Where has that little gremlin gone?!  
Frantically, she stepped forward and back, turning and looking this way and that, nearly tipping over her crate, unsure of where to go or what to do. She had never lost her sister before! She knew that it would be considered a Disturbance if she started hollering her name, so she kept quiet and paced about in a small circle, not wanting to leave the spot. After several minutes of fretting, she noticed a Behavioral Regulatory Official standing beside a light post, scanning the crowd for signs of trouble, but mainly serving as a reminder to the people — who were all too tired and terrified to bother causing any trouble, anyhow — of the Republic’s vigilance. Camdyn marched up to him, still balancing the crate, which was now made heavy by the bottles from the strange boy. She chose the most formal and respectful greeting she knew.  
“Hail the Republic!”  
The Official looked down at her with disinterest and responded in turn;  
“Hail its Benevolence.”  
“Sir, my younger sister is missing. She wandered off from me in the square. Would you be willing to call an announcement or check surveillance for her?”  
After a long period of silence, the Official blinked and replied, “I would not.”  
Camdyn was startled. She hadn’t received an update telling her to specifically watch out for Jaxi, so it was obvious that she had not seen the need to send one. Could that be because Jaxi’s disappearance led to her early death? Every citizen was aware that one could not alter the termination point of a timeline. Time would always reassert itself. If one sent an update not to drink that poisoned tea just before dying, and one’s past self chose not to drink it, that past self would be hit by a cargo truck or struck by lightning or gripped with a severe myocardial infraction. Timeline Termination is final. Suddenly breathing hard, Camdyn spun around and stormed off from the useless and unhelpful Official. She had not taken more than three steps however, before she knocked a small body to the ground. It was, of course, Jaxi, and Jaxi was, of course upset at being knocked onto her backside.  
“HEY!” she hollered, tears welling up in her eyes as she turned her face upwards with such an expression of indignation and hurt as Camdyn had never seen before.  
Jaxi was such a piteous sight, that Camdyn set down her crate, plopped down beside her, and wrapped her up in a warm embrace, rocking back and forth. Though the girl had been gone but a few minutes, but Camdyn treated her as though she’d been resurrected from a sudden and violent death. She gently cooed and softly hushed the whimpering babe — who could not fathom why her elder sister would push her over so — even promising to buy her some sort of treat in the market. She opened her tablet, still cooing and soon found an entry she knew Jaxi would adore.  
“Come on, Jax,” she said sweetly, “we’ll go get you a treat.”  
Jaxi sniffed and rubbed her eyes, but stood, weakly choking back her tears to replace them with anticipation. She followed Camdyn, who was staring at her tablet, following the instructions there. Soon, the pair of girls walked up to an older woman, obviously from one of the Agricultural District, who had a crate full of vibrantly colored ribbon, obviously dyed with various berries and roots. Camdyn traded her two skeins of yarn for one roll of bright pink, sateen ribbon, then turned and tied a length into Jaxi Jay’s warm, auburn curls. She held up her tablet, mirror function activated, so Jaxi could admire herself. Soon, the five- year- old was back to her energetic, bubbly self, rushing ahead of Camdyn and rushing back again, pointing and babbling on and on about everything she saw. The ribbon hung cockeyed from a gather of curls and bounced jauntily to and fro as Jaxi rushed hither and thither, taking interest and delight in the most plain and common things. A puddle here that glittered in the pale light that eked out from behind the clouds, a crack in the pavement there that resembled the bird on the Republic’s Crest, an Agricultural Citizen here selling cuts of meat to errand runners of various Republic Officials, a man there with a great rip in his jacket.  
Camdyn adored the little girl with all her heart and was glad to have to care for her. Soon, notifications of interest dinged and beeped from her tablet, guiding her to find various shoppers and trade them for her wares. By the end of her endeavor, she had procured two jars of golden- green olive oil, various teas and herbs wrapped in linen scraps, a whole head of cabbage, and a small, neoplasticine safety knife with which she could chop the hearty roughage. Not to mention the three glittering bottles of Verdant Tonic. Lightened by satisfaction with her haul and by the playful attitude of her sister, a smile spread across Camdyn’s face. It was not a sun- behind the clouds kind of smile, either, but a full- force sunshine, blue- sky smile as the weather of her mind cleared. A bird or two may have even sung in Camdyn Layne Alethea on that late morning of the sixteenth Market Day of rainy season.  
But soon, she remembered that boy and his words. The words that were so unique to her father’s thinking. The words that were his. No one else’s. The words that only a few had ever heard. How could he have known those words? She did not think that he could have just thought up the same exact words that her father had. It was too big a coincidence. He must have heard them somewhere, she thought, grinding her teeth absent mindedly. But it seemed too far- fetched. Too far- flung. Her father had been very secretive about his words. He had not let hardly anyone hear them. Only Camdyn and mother. Then he had vanished. Had never come home from that black factory building. Never come home from his maintenance job there. It had been two years and he still had not come home.  
Oftentimes, Camdyn wished that, if he was dead, he could have come home to die. It hurt so much more not to know if he was dead or alive. Not to know if he was in a dungeon or a grave. Of course, Camdyn did not accept the fact that he could possibly be dead, in the hopes that she could find him someday. But blind hope is such an exhausting and heavy thing to be. She could feel it pulling at her. Dragging her downwards. Drowning her.  
It was not fair in the slightest, which had always been just the way that Mr. Alethea had liked things; completely unfair and almost miserable. ”It lets you know that you’re human, Camdyn. Nothing ever happens, here. Affliction is just as good a reason to rejoice as is fortune, because at least you are feeling something.” Camdyn had not been so sure. It often seemed better not to have to worry about anything than to be able to be happy and sad. She had often wondered what it must be like to be a cow on an Agricultural District plain. Well- fed. Cared for. No worrying. No rejoicing. Just a life of basic needs always met. It sounded like the loveliest thing Camdyn could think of.  
All the way back to the cubicle. Camdyn considered the boy and the worry very heavily She could see no connection between her father and the boy, except that maybe they had worked in the same factory together, and her father had mentioned it to the boy in one of his uninvited monologues. But father had always been so careful about saying his words to anyone besides his daughter and his wife. He had not wanted to be forced to stop, so he made himself as small a threat as he could. It had been very wise in Camdyn’s eyes.  
The next week went by uneventfully. From cubicle to Education Center and back to cubicle again. She spoon fed her mother her rye milk and Verdant Tonic in the mornings and her olive oil with diluted rye meal in the evenings. She minded Jaxi a bit more closely and paid little to no attention to the repetitive lessons and classes that she was required to endure. It wasn’t until the fifth day of the week that anything of note happened, but it was such a peculiar and frustrating thing that Camdyn worried and mused about it for many weeks after.  
It was finally the twelfth hour and the afternoon sessions at the Education Center had just let out. Camdyn drudged up the pavement with all the other year fourteens, as the year fifteens did behind them and the year thirteens did before them. The crowd of year fifteens began to creep up on the crowd of year fourteens and soon the two crowds mingled into one. They were not crowds in the sense that they acted as such. They did not joke nor did they jostle. They did not speak nor did they acknowledge the existence of any of their peers around them. The crowds of young citizens were, in a sense, homogenous. They all walked slowly forward, one foot after the other, not needing to interact with anyone around them. They did not touch. They did not talk. They merely flowed down the street: a river of bodies. As Camdyn stared at her feet and trudged onward, she happened to glance up — a general precautionary measure, as there were often obstacles such as curbs and cracks in the pavement that those before her obscured — and when she did, she saw the odd boy from the marketplace. He was not hard to miss, as he towered above most of the other young citizens, and Camdyn, in recognition, moved through the crowd towards him, figuring she would make some effort to say hello.  
After attempting to meet his eye for some time, Camdyn became annoyed. Did this year fifteen not notice her? She gently gesticulated, indicating familiarity, and still received no response. After a solid three minutes, she marched over and touched his arm. He recoiled and turned to look at her, annoyed that anyone would dare break decorum and come into contact with him in any way. Camdyn smiled and waited for recognition to spread across his face. But it didn’t. He cocked his head to one side and squinted inquisitorially, almost glaring the question. Camdyn frowned slightly, also cocking her head in confusion.  
To her astonishment, the boy just huffed and turned forward again, quickening his pace to put distance between himself and the queer girl at his elbow. Frustrated, Camdyn jogged a couple steps to catch up with him and put her hand out to touch him, opening her mouth to ask him about the words he ought not to know. Upon feeling her sleight, yet strong hand on his bony shoulder, he turned and snarled at her, stopping her in her tracks.  
“What do you want?”  
It wasn’t a very loud demand. More of a hissing whisper. But his lip curled in agitation, making it quite a terrifying one.  
“I… I just wanted to ask you where you got those words,” Camdyn began slowly, apologetically, suddenly self- conscious as all the fourteen and fifteen years flowed around them, as though they were rocks in a creek. “Those words you said when you were walking away from me on Market Day.”  
He gave her a withering look.  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he hissed. “Who are you?”  
It became startlingly apparent to Camdyn that he really didn’t know and that he wasn’t just being difficult. Muttering her apology, she walked around him and up the street toward the 5th Municipal Education Center.  
After collecting Jaxi and returning to the cubicle, Camdyn decided that tonight was not a night to do any spinning. She needed to speak with Taryn. Taryn Ardis McGoughna. Taryn, despite his quite effeminate given name, was an elderly man who lived and worked at the steel mill on the other side of the Metropolis. He had been close friends with her father’s father, and had been uprooted to the Metropolis by the Republic Officials in the same week as Lawrence Alethea. He was kind and old and wise, and often helpful if you slipped him extra vittles. Giving Jaxi careful instructions to stay in the cubicle, then taking her to use the public bathrooms as a precautionary measure, Camdyn took up her satchel, an unopened bottle of Verdant Tonic — which Camdyn had found to have a pleasant, refreshingly sweet, and natural flavor, two small glasses, and several round rye cakes wrapped in linen. Shoving all the goodies inside, she stepped out the door of the cubicle and strode out of the barracks with purpose. She had until the fourth hour of darkness fell, after which point a curfew was aggressively enforced.  
It was a short trek across the city, really. Camdyn knew the streets and alleys too well to waste a single footfall, and as she directed herself along the swiftest and most efficient route, she pondered her day, confused and befuddled to her core. She frowned, her delicate brow knitting itself together as disappointment clouded her face. She had so desperately wanted to know how he’d gotten those words. So, so desperately.  
The Metropolis was, oddly enough, quite a peaceful place in the evening. The whole city was situated on a great, wide plateau which was surrounded by flat, empty land. Moist, black ground on which nothing grew without the careful, deliberate guidance from a citizen of the Republic. Ground that appeared rich and ready to care for those around it, but was poisoned by the Cataclysm. The Great Fires, the Nuclear Weapons, had ruined the great expanse of earth. A great expanse of earth that was fabled to once be ornamented with “amber waves of grain”, golden and flowing in the wind, as far as the horizon, meeting the cool azure sky and glimmering under the brightness of the young sun. Now, after the Great Fires, the sky was gray. It was always gray. It drizzled and misted most of the time, which was not ideal, because, of course, if you drank rain water without its having been through the Electrolysis Filtration Process, you could die of radiation poisoning. But in the evenings, the Shining Hilltop City of the Metropolis was cool. Pleasant. More often than not, a warm evening breeze came swirling and spinning in from the west, and tried its very best to warm the moistened, dampened, and tired city. Through that city Camdyn walked briskly, blind to any beauty of evening in her utter disappointment.  
She was not quite sure why she had so had her heart set on understanding the boy and the words, but the whole matter troubled her deeply. It set into her core. It clung to her bones like some cruel form of emotional rheumatism, unyielding, unrelenting. Despite her efficiency, Camdyn walked for a full half an hour before she arrived at the steel mill and was able to slip in through the rickety side door that invariably appeared locked but never really was.  
Camdyn made a beeline for the greasy, dark office in the corner of the mill, which was rather wedged behind an enormous boiler that seemed to be unattached to any machinery whatsoever and merely served the purpose of making the tiny room all the darker and more crowded. She marched up to the grimy little window and peered in. Sure enough, Taryn was at his post, fast asleep, waiting for a mechanics alarm or phone to go off and request his services. Camdyn smiled. She had not seen him for many months. Not since they added Grandfather’s ashes to the Compost and Fertilizer Silo in the storage sanction area on the southern skirts of the Metropolis, as was his express wish. It had been an enormously difficult endeavor to get the gray dust in, undetected. Still smiling, Camdyn reached up and rapped on the window sharply. Taryn started and whipped about, already babbling excuses for his slumber, all which instantly ceased and were replaced by a warm, silent smile when his eyes met hers.  
“Camdyn,” he growled finally, leaning over to unlock the squeaky door to the mechanics office, “it’s good to see you, girl.”  
Camdyn breathed a sigh of relief and release as she stepped through it.  
“It’s good to see you, too, Taryn. I’ve brought sweets.”  
His face spread into a wrinkled grin, revealing a mere seven teeth in his whole mouth, and hiding his eyes in folds of wrinkled, weathered skin. He was tall — at least six feet and seven inches — even in his old age, and the ghost of a once- hardy frame still hung about him, despite the wizened skin and great tufts of snow white hair at his ears. Camdyn knew his smile all too well, and returned it warmly with her own. Taryn was one of the few people in the Metropolis that Camdyn loved — her family included. His gaze rested comfortably on her as she pulled out the rye cakes and bottle and glasses. She poured him a small measure to start with, and, upon receiving the glass, he began to sip at it without question, nodding in approval of the refreshing flavor of the mysterious fluid, silently and amicably. After they had both begun their first rye cake, Taryn finally leaned forward and spoke.  
“So, what brings you across town, Miss Camdyn Layne Alethea?”  
His voice was not the voice you would expect from such a man, who had once been so powerful and yet was always so kind. It was more of a grunt than anything else, and the wobbling tone of it always lent itself to seem as though he were either about to laugh or about to cry, the latter of which Camdyn had only seen him do at the passing of Lawrence Alethea.  
“I just miss conversation that isn’t with an unresponsive invalid or a crazed five- year- old,” Camdyn offered, proceeding to take a long draw from her glass and shove a fresh mouthful of rye cake into her mouth after it.  
“Mmm…” Taryn acknowledged, nodding once again. “S’pose that does get exhausting. How’s that momma of yours, anyhow? I’d come by if I had the time to.”  
Camdyn nodded back at him.  
“She’s been less pale lately, even before I started giving her this,” with the ultimate word, Camdyn flicked her wrist and sloshed her drink around in a small circle, sending it spinning in a tiny, green whirlpool around and around the inside of her glass, as if to show Taryn just what it could do.  
“Mmm…” Taryn acknowledged again. “Seems like nice enough stuff,” he muttered, peering at it in his own glass, then tossing the rest back and filling it up again.  
“She even smiled yesterday,” Camdyn offered, recalling the tiny, weak smile that her mother had managed to force when Camdyn had brought an enormous bowl of soap and water to wash her mother’s hair.  
“Mmm…” was Taryn’s only response, and for a while, the two sat in silence, eating. An unlikely and, frankly, quite odd pair of friends. That was one thing Camdyn loved about Taryn. She was his friend. He treated her like his equal — like an adult — and expected her to act like it, which she did in her mother’s stead.  
Finally, Camdyn refreshed the conversation.  
“Taryn, do you ever wonder about the World Before?”  
The smile faded slowly from Taryn’s gray face and he looked with concern at Camdyn.  
“Now, Sugar. What would make you ask an old man something like that?” he murmured, not unkindly.  
Camdyn shrugged.  
“I suppose,” she deliberated, “that I just don’t quite understand how everything works.”  
Taryn seemed to understand her statement, despite its severe ambiguity.  
“Now, you listen to me, Miss Camdyn,” he warbled, still sounding as though he could cry at any moment, “we are lucky to live in an era of such beauty and perfection. There are no wars and no fights and no arguments. Everyone lives in peace. You couldn’t possibly want more from the world, now could you?”  
Camdyn felt selfish for wanting to say yes, so she shook her head, both in order to convince herself and the kind man who sat opposite her that, no, she could not.  
“That’s right,” Taryn said, leaning back in his chair. “Now, what’s that face about, hm? You’re pouting, Sugar. Never does anybody a lick of good to pout, you know.”  
“Oh,” Camdyn sighed, realizing that her face did, in fact, reflect a certain unhappiness that she had not meant to bleed through to the physical world. “I’ve just been reminded of my father a lot this week, Taryn. I miss him quite a lot. And even so, I want my Momma back. She was so beautiful, Taryn. So loving. Maybe a bit dull at times, but I loved her so dearly. And now… she’s old. Beyond her years. I don’t know how long she’ll last, and I’m terrified that the Production Efficiency Officers will cut our monthly rations to that of two underage citizens and let her wither into nothing. I..”  
Camdyn continued. As she went, she got faster and faster and more and more upset. Her unhappiness filled her to the brim and overflowed, as she poured out worry after worry that Taryn was astonished to hear come from the mouth of a girl no older than twelve. The worries of a woman in the hands of a child.  
When Camdyn was finally done, she took a deep breath and leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees and resting her face in her hands. Her auburn braid swung down and hung between her knees, seeming to droop with exhaustion just to complete the picture. A tired moan escaped her throat.  
“Sugar,” murmured Taryn hoarsely, reaching forward to put a crooked hand on her back. “You’re doing so well. Don’t you give up now.”  
He gave her a gently, reassuring rub, and they sat like that for many minutes.  
After a while, they spoke, but each one was careful to avoid any heavy topics. They compared the thickness and sweetness this season’s rye meal and compared it to past seasons. They talked about Jaxi and how quickly she was growing. Taryn told several stories about his late wife, Edith. Eventually, Camdyn got up to leave, hugged the old man, and slipped out the door, giving herself ample time to reach home before curfew began. 

CHAPTER FOUR  
Trust can be All a person possesses,  In hours of Light, Trust shakes her long tresses, She seduces and comforts and creeps up behind, All a man has can him quickly unwind.  
The Metropolis was now cloaked in blackness. Camdyn stole nervously from flickering pool of light to flickering pool of light, not daring to go down any alley that was not illuminated, terrified of some nameless, shapeless feeling that she had never been able to shake, as long as she had lived. The mist in the streets grew thick and tangible, stroking Camdyn’s cheeks and making her shudder and she waded through it.  
It took her nearly twice as long to reach home as it had for her to leave it. Having jogged to make sure she did not get locked out of the barracks compound, she entered Hall Seven panting just slightly. As the door heaved shut behind her, she stopped, cocking her head to the right just a tiny fraction of an inch, trying to hear past the echo of the enormous bolt sliding into place, something. Something very faint, sounding almost miles or years away. Something through the walls. Something shrill.  
Something screaming.  
Camdyn’s body locked and she stood frozen at the threshold of Hall Seven. Every instinct in her body screamed desperately at her to MOVE FORWARD, but she couldn’t. Her throat tightened as the echo slowly died, allowing the sound of torment, of torture, to more strongly meet Camdyn’s ears, finally animating her. She bounded to the door, hoping, praying that she was imagining the sound. That it was coming from another cubicle. But as she scanned her card and heard the bolt spring, she knew in her heart that it was not. The door swung open. The sound of screaming flooded the stone hallway with force enough to push Camdyn back a step, and for a tiny, infinitesimal millisecond, Camdyn stood outside her cubicle, bathed in the hoarse sound of terror.  
Her mother lay howling on the sleeping mat, still partially tangled in the blankets, back arched, bony hands gripping the edge. Her face was turned up toward the ceiling; her eyes were sunken so far into her head and her mouth so far open, that the three gaping holes gave her an inhuman aura. Camdyn rushed in, looking wildly about for what could possibly be causing her darling mother’s torment and dropped onto her hands and knees beside her mother.  
The thin body was strained in every direction. Arms twisted to reach and cling to the edges of the mat, veins bulging in the pale neck, legs kicking and flailing.  
Camdyn had no idea what to do, and the woman’s unearthly screech blinded her mind, overwhelming and distressing her. She reached out and gently put a hand on her mother’s arm. Instantly, the weak woman’s screaming ceased, and a claw of a hand shot out to grip Camdyn’s arm with surprising strength. The woman heaved and turned, crazed, to face Camdyn.  
Camdyn’s eyes were hot and stinging with tears, but she blinked them back and leaned forward, questioningly.  
“Momma…?”  
Her mother spoke for the first time in seven seasons, her voice but a hoarse whisper both from prolonged disuse and sudden, violent overuse—  
“…the black figure…”  
—then collapsed back onto the mat. Lifeless.  
In the silence, Camdyn was suddenly able to hear Jaxi, sobbing softly. With a start, she leapt up and ran over to the kitchenette to throw open the cupboard all the way to the left. Jaxi was there, bowls and pitchers shoved aside, knees curled up to her chest, fists balled, weeping in fear and confusion. Camdyn bent down and scooped up the tiny girl, straightening up to hold her close. Jaxi clung to her sister, burying her damp face in the soft fabric at her shoulder, and the two girls stayed that way for several long minutes, allowing their pulses to slow. Eventually, Camdyn put Jaxi down and looked her in the eyes, blinking back hot tears of her own.  
“What happened?” she demanded, struggling to shape the words in her mouth.  
Jaxi thought for a few moments, mouth puckered on the threshold of a fresh round of tears, then shook her little head.  
“Just screaming,” she offered.  
“Momma didn’t say anything? No one came into the cubicle?”  
Jaxi looked at Camdyn, eyes welling up and nodded.  
“Someone came?”  
No, they hadn’t, said the shaking auburn curls.  
Camdyn’s throat went dry.  
“Momma said something?”  
Jaxi nodded, twisting her round, little mouth to stop herself from crying.  
“Jaxi,” Camdyn said as slowly and as soothingly as she could manage, “what was it?”  
Jaxi looked up at her older sister, with a look that told Camdyn that she was almost hurt to be asked, and was quiet for several minutes.  
“She made me come inna room. She said she din’t mean to. She said she loved him lots. Over and over.”  
Camdyn’s brow knit.  
“She said she loved who, Jaxi?”  
“She loved daddy, Cammin. She din’t mean to kill him.”  
With this, she extended one of her balled up fists, and opened it.  
A lock of black hair, interspersed with a few wiry grays, lay in the child’s tiny, sweaty palm.  
Marcus Layne Alethea’s. 

CHAPTER FIVE  
To lose what one loves is the greatest of pains, But to hate what you love while the object remains? Far worse to lose love for the thing you adore, Than to have it taken and love it still more.  
It was very uncommon for a Barracks Guard to become bored. Being so very fine- tuned to the task and subsequently having the ability to stand perfectly still for extended periods of time, mind emptied, merely observing, Republic Guardsman Number 07023 (he had forsaken his rather poetic given name — Quatrain Rosehip — for the use of his Citizen Identification Number, as had many in the Republic’s Peace Corps. For if we are all one, what good can come of identity?) scanned the cobbled courtyard in the pitch blackness. Those assigned to the duty of Barracks Guard were rotated on a daily basis, in order to avoid any level of familiarity or fraternization with the Civilian Citizens. It was key that those wholly dedicated to the service of the Republic were not diluted nor tainted by those who were of a weaker persuasion of dedication to the Benevolence of the Republic. The Civilian Citizens, bodies swathed in gray and neatly trimmed of any surplus muscle or flesh, heads neatly trimmed of any surplus adornment, minds trimmed of any surplus activity, ambled in great, oceanlike masses beneath the numerous observation towers and turrets of the Peace Corps Guards, like some sort of self- maintained livestock, used for the Republic Officials’ purposes, then tossed into a cremator and burned to fertilize the next year’s crop of genetically enhanced, hybridized rye grain. Guardsman Number 07023 felt, or, merely was inclined to act as though he felt, that not only was he above the mere masses by his place in the Barracks Guard Turrets, but also in the fact that he had devoted all of himself to the upholding of the Republic. To the furthering and implementing of the information passed down to the People from the Officials. To the perfecting of this Blessed Nation.  
Hence, he stood straight, slightly more muscular than the average steel or rye mill worker his size, but not by more than twenty pounds, manning his post in the most diligent way he could. He had a familiar, pretty face— or, rather, he had once had a face pleasant to look at, before the Corps had hardened his features and made a man from a boy, then a machine from a man. He was not more than eighteen or nineteen years of age, and his close- shorn blond hair still showed the boyish curls that he so desperately tried to hide. His uniform, of a much more dark purple shade of gray than the standard- issue Civilian Citizens’ getups, had several functional pockets, a factory- embroidered patch bearing his Citizen Identification Number, a patch bearing his rank (Guardsman Second Class), and one bearing the unit with which he was affiliated, but was otherwise unadorned. His purple uniform had no buttons or clasps, but strips of extremely strong magnetic fabric, which snapped against itself at the pocket flaps and at the front of his jacket, all of which added to a certain unnecessary neat- and- tidiness that only made the Corpsman seem all the more ridiculous.  
Nevertheless, he stood, vigilant, scanning the courtyard and the spaces between the individual barracks themselves. He racked his brains for any possible inkling of information he could remember about this specific set of barracks, whether there had been Incidents here in the past, or if there were any specific buildings he ought to watch. It was no use, however. He had been to a new set of barracks every day for his whole career as a Corpsman and he still had issues differentiating one from the next. He vaguely remembered some sort of substance abuse bust in this courtyard several months ago. The man hadn’t shown to his shift in three weeks, and the investigator sent to question him had found him unconscious, in a pool of his own vomit, and surrounded by forty or fifty bottles of various sizes— some already emptied, some waiting for him to do the same. They had dragged him out onto the cobblestones and executed him with the Republic- issued semiautomatic handgun of an associate of our dear Guardsman Number 07023. Or was that in Sector 9? he wondered to himself, pondering on it for several minutes. Yes, it had been in Sector 9. Of course it had. There had been great silos in the far- off background of the execution, and every guardsman knows that Sector 9, being backed up against the Metropolis Storage Facilities were notorious for finding new and creative ways of pilfering from those stores.  
Just as Guardsman Number 07023 was settling back in to his routine mental emptiness, he heard and saw something that drew him forward, into consciousness.  
The door of Building Fourteen was being heaved open, and from it poured a long rectangle of weakly flickering white light.  
The doors to the individual buildings were not really ever sealed. They did not need to be. The citizens were obedient servants of the Republic who would not dare disobey. The young Guardsman’s nose and eyes scrunched up in confusion. He had never witnessed such malarkey before or since the man with the bottles. This was uncalled for. This was disorder. This was utterly unacceptable. He moved to the door of the turret, sending a signal to the secondary turret that he would handle the situation. As he strode down the stairs and across the immense, empty courtyard, he watched the doorway. Two small figures, silhouetted in the light from the hallway and a sound that he was certain he had never heard before; crying. Sobbing, even. Gasping and sobbing again.  
As he walked, he scowled more and more, disapproving strongly of the flood of emotions he was observing. Most of the noise came from the smaller of the two figures, a child who clung to the elder as though the elder was her savior, but the Guardsman could hear some whimpering from the larger figure as well. Finally, he reached them. Two girls. Weeping. He was about to scold them when the elder of the two spoke to him.  
“Please, Corpsman, help us. Our mother has just died.”  
The Corpsman jumped. He had not expected that.  
“What happened?” he inquired, purely out of curiosity.  
Camdyn shuddered.  
“I think,” she said, “she had some kind of stroke or fit. I’m not sure.”  
The Corpsman nodded and spoke into the radio at his wrist, stopping to inquire about the cubicle and the corpse every so often. Finally, he strode in to inspect, and Camdyn followed him. She grabbed several blankets from the room and brought them back out to Jaxi, with whom she sat, wrapped up, doing her best not to cry as much as the dear toddler did.  
It was odd, really. Camdyn had not really lost a parent until tonight. Of course, Papa had been missing, but she had been sure of his survival in some Republic Holding Cell, awaiting his chance to escape and return to her. But, now? She had finally lost him. And she had lost her mother. And it was not just a loss of her life, but a loss of everything she had ever been or said. All the I love you’s, both to her children and to her husband, all of the suppers slaved over, all of the dresses and coats so painstakingly handcrafted, all of the teas and rye cakes made, and especially all of the You’ll understand when you’re older’s were gone. Gone, gone, gone. Destroyed. Obliterated. Ruined and spoiled by this one, single act. Everything leading up to it and following after it had been a lie. Lies, lies, lies. Camdyn supposed that this was why her mother had gotten so sick when her father had first disappeared. The guilt had been far too much for her to bear. She couldn’t sustain the act of “Yes, darling, I miss him, too,” for longer than three or four days, so she had slipped into guilt and sickness as a ruse. A disguise for the filth, the rot, of her soul.  
A white- hot anger began to rise in Camdyn. This woman, who she had so cared for, had turned out to be her greatest oppressor. She had spoon- fed this woman for months and months. She had worked and struggled and fought to keep her alive: bathing her, doing anything she could to get extra rations and vittles, brushing her hair, reading to her, talking to her, and even singing to her. She had always found that no matter how hard she worked, her mother did not seem any better at all. And now she knew why. Of course her mother was always conscious of everything that went on in the cubicle. She had feigned sleep and a sort of comatose unconsciousness to escape from it. Every time Camdyn did something to show love towards her mother, to express care, to sustain her, it was merely an addition to the guilt that plagued the woman, and she was no better off for it. Camdyn suddenly regretted every second of extra work she had done for her mother. Ever. Lies, lies, lies. Everything within Camdyn burned and swirled, a maelstrom of fury and fire and hate, rising closer to the surface with every second. She ground her teeth furiously against one another, recalling time after time again that she had wasted herself on her mother. She clenched her fists, considering the love and affection she had so desperately poured into the woman, telling her day and night that, now that Papa was gone, she was all Camdyn had left, and simply had to get better.  
“Cammin,” Jaxi’s voice brought Camdyn back to conscious thought in a heartbeat.  
“Cammin, you’re squeezing hard.” Jaxi was right. Camdyn had been tightening and tightening as she mused, giving no thought to the child in her arms, when that was the only thing she should be doing. She apologized softly and loosened her viselike grip.  
Suddenly, a drain was unstoppered within her, and the vast expanse of anger flowed out and away, leaving fear in its place. What now? she thought , desperately. Will they put us into the Full Service Republic Education System? Will they allow us to remain here? Her face paled as she came to the sickening realization.  
They would put them into the Full Service Republic Education System and Camdyn would never see her sister again. Not ever. Jaxi would be raised by the state and would be brainwashed to not even remember her sister.  
How could this happen?! she screamed in her mind, looking wildly about at the medical team which had just arrived to clear away the body.  
How was this not all avoided through the Personal Timeline Update System?! It must have— Camdyn gave a little gasp. Of course. No one is able to circumnavigate a death. It’s not possible. Timeline Termination is final.  
She was about to start a fresh bout of tears when a young man approached her.  
“Camdyn!” he exclaimed, obviously happy to see her but acting with care not to upset her. “How are you, miss?”  
Camdyn scowled in confusion, shifting her seating slightly so that she could see his face in the light. Young. Plain. Pale. Clad in a long, grey canvas coat that marked him as a medical examiner. Seeing that she did not recognize him, the man gave a tiny smile and stepped forward to put his hands on her shoulders.  
“Camdyn, are you alright?”  
She gave a slight squirm to rid her shoulders of his hands.  
“…do I know you?” she asked, suspicious already of some government ploy or ruse.  
“Camdyn, it’s me!” he murmured emphatically. “I mended your sister’s leg on Market Day all those months ago, when she was bawling loud enough to wake the dead.” He was quiet for several moments. “It was so fascinating to have a real medical emergency on the Collective Timeline.”  
Camdyn began to have a vague understanding of the situation, despite her grief and fear- clouded mind.  
“Tell me…” she began, waiting for him to remind her of his name.  
“Ah, Medical Examiner Number 092418,” he prompted.  
Camdyn nodded. Of course he was not a name- user.  
“Tell me, Medical Examiner, how exactly did my sister… hurt her leg?”  
The young man looked confused, not understanding why she would ask.  
“Run over by a factory cargo cart in the south end of the square.”  
Camdyn understood.  
“Medical Examiner, I’m sorry, but that never happened. I received an Update several months ago on Market Day, instructing me to keep out of the south end of the square. I’ve never met you.”  
He frowned, obviously disappointed.  
“Oh,” he mumbled awkwardly. “I suppose that would be something to send an update about, wouldn’t it? Gosh, I hadn’t thought of that. My, my. We talked for such a long time, too. And about such inspiring things. I was hoping… I was hoping you’d be able to tell me more.”  
Camdyn was taken aback. She could not remember this man nor the conversation she’d had with him, but she wondered what she’d said.  
“What was it I told you?” she inquired slowly, beginning to rock Jaxi to comfort her.  
He looked left and right, checking to be sure that no one was eavesdropping, which did not at all surprise Camdyn, and bent down closer to her.  
“You told me about John Locke,” he whispered, “and Thomas Pain and Thomas Hobbes. You told me about Rights and Freedoms.”  
Camdyn regretted the thing she had never done, yet had done. When was she going to be able to keep a lid on herself and her fountain of forbidden knowledge? Besides, now that every branch of Republic Government had a delegate in her cubicle, they were sure to confiscate the books. This thought became far too much to bear and Camdyn began to cry once again. She did not sob, but merely allowed the tears to flow freely from her eyes, down her cheeks, and into the curls of the babe on her lap.  
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice wavering. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
He looked startled, as though he’d been hoping to hope in her, but stood up respectfully and walked away, not bothering to say goodbye to a girl to whom he was a complete stranger. Camdyn let out a sigh and buried her face in the warmth of Jaxi’s curls, nuzzling her softly. Then she realized that the little girl probably had no idea what was about to happen to them. Quickly, she spun her around in her lap to look into her eyes and said;  
“Listen, Jaxi. I need to tell you that they’re going to take you away from me.”  
Jaxi, who was still giving tiny, hiccupping gasps, but had ceased bawling, looked terrified.  
“How long, Cammin?” she asked, fraught with concern.  
Camdyn’s heart wrenched inside of her.  
“For always.” She shaped the words slowly, hoping the child would understand.  
“No more us?” Jaxi murmured, eyes watering up once again.  
“Yes, Jaxi. No more us.”  
Surprisingly, Jaxi did not begin to bawl quite yet. So, Camdyn reached into her pocket and drew out the ribbon she had bought for Jaxi in the Market just days earlier. She took the child’s wrist, and tied the ribbon gently, but firmly, around it.  
“You keep this, Baby Girl. You keep this and don’t you forget me.”  
With that, a gray- suited attendant promptly marched up and eyed Camdyn.  
“Surrender the child,” she commanded flatly.  
Jaxi looked up at Camdyn, unsure of what her sister would do, desperate not to be abandoned to the arms of the State.  
Camdyn stood up, sliding Jaxi from her lap, removed the blanket from around her own shoulders, and wrapped it around the tiny child.  
“You treat her right,” she choked, knowing that the attendant would treat her exactly as she was trained to— as little more than cattle.  
The attendant rolled her eyes, and ushered Jaxi away, toward a Republic Containment Unit Van. With the sudden realization of what was to come, Jaxon Jay Alethea began to scream in fear and confusion. Attendants rushed from every direction, seeming to materialize out of nowhere, to contain the struggling child.  
“Jaxi!” Camdyn’s pulse quickened. “Jaxi you quit that right now!”  
The wailing and hollering continued, despite Camdyn’s desperate plea. As the sleight child fought the five or seven adults around her, she met Camdyn’s eyes for a fraction of a second. Camdyn began to run to her, to tell her that struggling would only make matters drastically worse, to tell her that she would be alright, when suddenly the child relaxed and flopped ungracefully backwards into the unwelcoming arms of a male attendant behind her. The female attendant to whom Camdyn had surrendered Jaxi jerked back on the syringe she was holding, removing the needle from deep in Jaxi’s skinny arm.  
There was nothing for Camdyn to do. She dropped to her knees, burying her face in her hands, and wept freely, allowing attendants of her own to drag her across the courtyard to a van of her own. Allowing them to drug her for her blatant hysteria.  
They did not understand.  
They did not know.  
She had just lost everything that had ever mattered to her.  
Her father.  
Her mother.  
Her sister.  
Her books, and any hope of ever learning more from them.  
Her freedom, however small a measure it was.  
They may as well just take my life, she thought to herself as she slowly faded from consciousness. 

CHAPTER SIX  
We cannot love the things in life That give us hope, without the strife. For beauty is defined by that, Which, in its nature, beauty lacks.  
Alces Louis Fluminis enthusiastically whacked the bottom of the overturned neoplasticine bucket with his bare hands in a wild, dancing rhythm, which earned him disdainful looks from both of his younger brothers.  
“Ah, c’mon, Marco,” Alces called playfully to his middle brother, swaying back and forth slightly as he pounded on his makeshift drum. “Don’t look at me like that. Join in!”  
Marco merely rolled his eyes and took another bite of his rye loaf, shaking his head as he chewed. Alces glanced over to Jensen, the youngest of the three, and grinned.  
“Eh, Jensen?” he hooted, increasing his rhythm’s tempo. “How ‘bout it?”  
Jensen, a young man more concerned with following rules than most were, gave his brother a withering look.  
“Music is bad enough on the cargo trucks, Alces,” he groaned through his mouthful of rye loaf. “You’re going to get caught if you keep it up on the fields like this.”  
Alces shook his head at them and drummed all the harder, now humming along to the turbulent rhythm as he played. He had finished his lunch as quickly as he could, devouring his rye loaf and draining his canteen in mere seconds, in order to play on the bucket and have a real rest. It relaxed him more than the traditional post- midday meal doze and left him feeling energized and animated. Ever since he had replaced music with his midday doze, he had been twice as productive as before. This notion alone was exciting to him, and he marveled at the human body and how it so deeply depended on the mind and the heart to function.  
Today was the ninth day that he had picked up the makeshift drum, and his viridescent, molten- gold eyes glowed with a new vigor as he plucked up the courage to sing along to his furious percussing that rattled through the air like a trapped demon, dancing madly and terribly and beautifully all at once. It invigorated him, endowing him with the mental and spiritual resolve to actually finish his work in the rye fields for the day, and as he threw once last glance at his brothers, he noticed that both the tip of Marco’s boot and the first finger on Jensen’s left hand were tapping along softly. A grin spread across Alces’s black- stubbled face, but he pretended not to notice as he wove lyrics into his fiery cadence. Singing a song of a world once beautiful. A song he had learned from those who had learned it as it had been passed down to them, from those people of the Dome who remembered. Those who remembered the forgotten world.  
Golden sun hangs high above, Looking down with love on it, On that world that it does love, Life so warm and animate. Smiles to know that, from so far, Rays of gold those lives did bless, Help’d them grow to what they are, Gave the world her verdant dress. Bridegroom to his darling bride, Croons a song of shining light, “In you, Love, I take great pride, Don’t forget me in the night.” In the dark, lost is that tune, As Earth sells love to Jealous Moon.  
As he finished the piece he knew to be called the Celestial Sonnet, he slowed his drumbeats in an emphatic crescendo, only to realize that both of his brothers had dozed off, despite his passionate music- making. He smiled, shaking his head, and pushed the bucket away to let them sleep in peace. He wondered at the idea of animals roaming freely across the landscape. Of course, the people of the Dome had preserved several breeds of livestock: cows, horses, and pigs —neither the chickens nor the goats nor the sheep had survived in the Dome. However, the notion of wild animals, out fending for themselves in the lush wilderness was a strange and beautiful thought to Alces. He wondered if people might have ever done that. Fended for themselves. Out and away from the oppressive governments. He supposed that there may not have always been oppressive governments. Was there not a land fabled to be “the land of the free, the home of the brave?” Or another, whose anthem rang “liberty, equality, fraternity?” Alces wondered if those were passions that the government had considered for themselves. He wondered how a government could have possibly sprung up having notions like those. It made little sense to him, for a government to be selfless in any nature. Was that not the purpose of a government? Of even a self- government? To benefit the needs of those prioritized to be most important— namely, oneself— was the only function he saw the government fulfilling.  
After several minutes of silence, the tower whistle screamed and roused all the napping field workers. Alces glanced at his brothers, who grinned at him with grins of disapproval, yet of acceptance, and followed him out from under the awning, each one grabbing a hoe or a rake or a shovel and marching out into the rye fields to root out any weeds. No one really understood if the weeds had survived the Cataclysm, or if they had come along with the preserved crops, but one thing was certain: there really is no way to rid one’s field of weeds entirely, no matter how hard you try. 

CHAPTER SEVEN  
What would a man be ‘feared to find, If he retreated to his mind? If he concedes to look within, He may wake his Leviathan.  
White. A color quite foreign to the citizens of the Metropolis. Sterile. Plain. Searingly bright. Glaring off of any and every reflective surface. Burning. Unfamiliar.  
Camdyn sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, facing the wall opposite. The room was small and white— white tiles on the walls and floors with white grout between them. A small white toilet. A white sink beneath a mirror, reflecting only whiteness, with a tiny silver faucet below it. A white metal bed with a scratchy, white blanket thrown over a stiff, white mattress. The back of a solid, white door with white hinges and white bolts. This is why Camdyn jumped when she looked down at herself to discover that she was clad in a crimson jumpsuit of a stiff, acrylic fabric. Oddly enough, it was well- fitted. Not bulky or baggy, but snug. Well- trimmed. Showing her thin, girlish shape beneath. For some reason that she couldn’t fully explain, she began to panic. This was wrong. Very wrong. She stood up and crossed to the mirror, only to find that that they had not shorn off her hair. This confused her. Unsettled her. Surely they had been waiting to devoid her of it the moment they had the chance.  
—at the writing on the wall.  
“Lies. Lies. Lies.”  
Smeared on the wall in a blackish red fluid that Camdyn denied could possibly be blood. The room seemed to close in on her. Her eyes widened wildly, like prey about to be pounced on, and she frantically began to wipe her hands on her jumpsuit, on the walls, on the blanket. They left great smears on everything she touched, but were never clean. Frantically she ran from surface to surface, dragging her stained hands on each and every reachable surface, even rushing to the sink to rinse them in the flow of water. Nothing. No results. The stain remained and Camdyn could not bear it any longer. Eyes, welling up she heaved a shaky, terrified sigh and retired to the red- streaked bed, surveying the red-streaked room around her. Somehow, she felt a bit better. She was no longer the sore thumb. She blended in perfectly with her surroundings. She fit. She belonged. With a tiny smile, she lay her auburn- adorned head down on the red- marred pillow and went back to sleep.  
Later, she awoke again, and rolled over to stare at the ceiling. The walls were now clean, although the jumpsuit and shaved head remained, and the white light gleamed all the more intensely. Camdyn shuddered. Something was not right, but she was too stiff and tense with fear to sit up and really look around. Both at once, she desired an answer and no answer at all to her strange feeling of unsettled nerves. Inhaling slowly, Camdyn forced herself to sit up and look about her.  
In the corner of the room stood a black figure.  
Camdyn was not surprised to see it, but was nonetheless intimidated. The figure seemed as though it was a mere silhouette, but was physically standing in the room, silhouetted against nothing. Still. Tall. Dark. Quiet. Camdyn stared at it in silence for what seemed like an eternity in and of itself. Finally, she addressed it.  
“What are you?”  
Despite her attempt to keep her voice low, it ricocheted back and forth across the tiny, white cell. The black figure did not speak for several long moments, but when it replied to Camdyn, the voice was deep. Unnaturally so. Fading in and out between a somewhat mechanical tone and a smooth, velvety one, each of which was equally terrifying. Seeming to simply pour out of the figure, as no mouth moved visibly when it spoke.  
“I am you, Camdyn Layne Alethea,” it informed the small girl. “I am what you are and what you will be and what you have created.”  
Camdyn knit her brow, considering this, and decided that logic would most likely be the most effective way to deal with a specter.  
“How,” she inquired levelly, “can you be me if I am me? We cannot both be me.”  
The midnight shape nodded (or possibly shook his head: it was difficult to tell, but its dark cranium shifted in acknowledgement nonetheless).  
“I am a reflection,” it offered, not moving from the corner where it stood, but shifting from one foot to the other.  
“Are you the same reflection that informed me that my singing was banned?”  
“I am one and the same.”  
Camdyn nodded.  
“I assumed so,” Camdyn mused, leaning back against the wall with a certain air of disregard that seemed to annoy the figure.  
“What,” she asked nonchalantly, “is your purpose?”  
This question pleased the figure. It straightened up and swelled slightly, drawing itself to its full height.  
“I am a certain breed of juxtaposition,” it purred proudly. “I am contrast, present only to reveal ineptitude. I am your Antithesis.”  
Camdyn straightened up a bit.  
“So you are what I’m not to show me where I’m weak?” It seemed complex and silly when spelled it out like that, but Camdyn felt that it was a rather beautiful notion.  
“I am,” the bass- pitch intoned. “Would you like to know where you’re weak, Camdyn Layne Alethea?”  
Camdyn wasn’t sure she did, but the specter took a step forward, beginning to make a point.  
“Behold,” he rumbled, “my brethren.”  
Suddenly, they were not sitting in a tiny, white holding cell. They stood on top of a great cliff, overlooking a dark valley. Overhead, the sky burned orange and was streaked with columns of smoke, which laced the air with their pungent odor. Camdyn’s eye was drawn quite quickly by what her figure wanted her to see. A great crowd in the valley, consisting of hundreds upon thousands of black specters. They were all lined up in ranks, perfectly still and perfectly silent. The figure beside Camdyn inclined its head towards her, obviously searching for some statement or observation. Soon, it got impatient and inquired directly;  
“What do you see, Camdyn Layne?”  
“I see,” she murmured quietly, “an army. Uniform. You’re all identical.”  
“Ah,” purred the antithetical figure, nodding (or perhaps shaking its head). “Now, child, why on earth would I show this to you? My brothers are none of your concern, really.”  
Camdyn wondered that same question, but did her best to answer it, despite her tense feeling that this was leading up to something awful.  
“Because I am not.”  
“You aren’t,” confirmed the rolling voice of the black figure. “Now, Camdyn. Why are you not?”  
The figure took a step towards her, startling her.  
“I’m not… I just… I suppose I don’t know,” she trailed off, genuinely unsure.  
“I see,” the figure conceded, unmoving.  
They were now back in the tiny white cell.  
“Camdyn,” purred her Antithesis, “why are the citizens of the Republic a homogenous people? Explain that.”  
Camdyn considered the question.  
“I suppose it’s because they all answer to the same government and have the same goals, so they all are the same as a means of achieving those goals.” (All those social lessons in the Education Center had amounted to something, Camdyn thought to herself, if only just an answer to a figure in a dream. Could this be a dream?)  
“Excellent,” uttered the silhouette. “Now, back to my previous question. Why aren’t you?”  
Camdyn’s throat tightened.  
“I suppose I don’t have the same set of values as they do,”  
“Yes, very good,” the black figure spoke much faster, now. “Camdyn Layne, you do not belong.”  
Camdyn felt that this statement was a rather obvious one, but nodded in assent anyways. The figure continued.  
“You, my darling, have been lied to from the start.”  
Camdyn smirked, despite herself.  
“Yes, I’m aware,” she informed her Antithesis. “The Republic spoon- feeds lies more efficiently than any other government ever erected.”  
She was quite pleased with her retort, but to her surprise, the figure began to laugh.  
“It is amusing,” it said between chuckles, a smile audible in its voice but not visible on its face, “to hear you quote your father so religiously.”  
Somehow, this made Camdyn feel very, very small. Infinitesimal. A mere speck. She fell back on the mattress and curled up, hiding her face. The figure swelled and its voice roared through the cell.  
“You, Camdyn, have been indoctrinated by your father. Brainwashed just as efficiently as he claims we do. He challenged you to find meaning in life, but what did you do? You merely accepted his set of values. Swallowed them without question. Now he’s really gone, and you still don’t even understand the delicacies of his death, and yet you presume to draw upon his knowledge to challenge me? How dare you insult me so?! How dare you?!”  
The echo of his final syllables remained, pounding strongly on the walls of the tiny, white room for many long minutes as Camdyn lay numb on the bed.  
It’s not true. It is not true. Not ever. Not at all. No, no, no, no. Not true. All lies.  
She lay, moaning and mumbling for what seemed like an eternity when she heard something that terrified her more than any other sound she had ever heard.  
“Cam, honey, what are you crying like that for?”  
She froze, still curled up on the bed, her back turned to most of the room. Her throat tightened as she lay there and her mouth went dry and sticky.  
No, no, no! Not this! Anything but this!  
“You’re not real,” she informed the voice, desperately hoping for it to be true.  
“Maybe. Maybe not. Doesn’t mean we can’t have a chat, though.”  
Silently begging for mercy, Camdyn sat up and turned around.  
“Hey, Papa.”  
“Hey, there, Cam. How’s my big girl?”  
Her father looked exhausted. Haggard. As though he’d come a long way to be here. His black hair was no longer glossy, but dusted with gray, and his eyes seemed much more tired than Camdyn could remember them ever looking. Presently, she ignored his inquiry as to her well- being and sat opposite him, staring darkly.  
“Aw, come on, Cam. Don’t give me that look.”  
She continued to give him that look.  
“Look, Cam, I’m trying to help you out, here.”  
“I don’t want your help,” Camdyn iterated clearly. Firmly. Harshly.  
“Cam… Baby Girl, I thought you missed me. I thought you wanted me back. I’m here, now! Isn’t this what you wanted?”  
Camdyn bit her lip to keep it from quivering.  
“Where have you been all this time?” she demanded.  
He sighed.  
“I’ve been dead.”  
Camdyn jumped. She had not expected that in the least. She had not expected to hear anything from that last night she could remember. She rather hoped that it, too, had only been a dream.  
“I always thought the Behavioral Re- Education Officials came and took you away for the way you talked…”  
Her father chuckled. At least, it seemed like her father. The chuckle was cold and condescending.  
“No, they didn’t. But they threatened to, and your mother didn’t like that.”  
Camdyn’s eyes darkened and she scowled in confusion and distrust.  
“So it’s true.” The words slid slowly and unpleasantly from Camdyn’s mouth.  
“True?” said the thing that looked very much like her father. “Yes, I suppose it is true. Your mother killed me, Camdyn Layne. Killed the man she loved in cold blood, out of devotion to both her children… and her country.”  
Camdyn’s mouth dropped open despite herself.  
“She did not love the Republic that much.”  
From the image echoed that same, cold laugh.  
“You did not know that much about her, child. …Do you know how I met her?”  
Camdyn shook her head slowly, unsurely, and the image of her father grinned. A cold shudder ran down Camdyn’s spine— a spider that tickled and terrified the one on whose flesh it crawled, making her sit up straight and alert, making the hair on her neck stand up. Her father strode over to the bed and sat on the foot of it. In return, Camdyn drew herself up onto the pillow, as far from him as she could possibly manage.  
“We were in the same class in the Education System. We met in our 15th year when I was explaining Locke to several of the young men in my class. She marched right up to me and began to argue against personal freedom and the right to rule. She was as much of an activist as I was, Camdyn. We got into the most heated debate that the schoolyard had ever seen. She even shoved me back into the wall, both palms on my chest, with more force than you could have possibly imagined a skinny, auburn- fuzzed kid could shove. I had never loved anyone so much, so I argued back. Boy, did we get into it. We hollered loud enough to draw the eye of a few Behavioral Report Officials, and in those days, you were taken to the Re- Education Center with the object of your conflict and forced to understand one another and to get along.  
“We loved it. They shut us in a room and told us to sort out our differences, so we sat and talked for hours. About the depravity of man, about rights, about surrender of rights, about prime reality, about the basis of knowledge. She knew more about anything than anyone I had ever met outside of my father. We learned from each other. And even though we disagreed on practically every topic, we so loved the intellectual challenge of one another that we resolved to never resolve our issues and stay in that little locked room forever.”  
Camdyn was shocked to learn that her mother had an opinion on government and on people. On anything, really.  
“We got married and had you, Cam,” continued the image of her father. “But she told me that we ought not to indoctrinate our children. We ought not to destroy their minds. I told her that her beloved Republic would do it, so we needed to counter it. She disagreed, and remained silent. She did not express her political views even once in front of you. She felt quite strongly that it was wrong. But I knew that if I didn’t teach you, the Republic would in my stead. So, I read to you often. Discussed my views with you often. This made your mother quite angry, but she tolerated it as far as she could. When the lessons began to draw Behavioral Notifications, she asked me to stop. Of course, I didn’t. So, she killed me. Unscrewed a length of galvanized pipe from the frame of the loom I had built for her and bludgeoned me to death in a the alley between 13th Street and Avenue M. Stuffed my body in the organic recyclables receptacle and sent herself a notification not to kill me that day. But it was too late. My timeline had ended and I was killed by electrocution in the back part of the factory, on the same day and at the same moment as on the former timeline. I was wedged between the boiler and furnace eighteen, which was broken at the time, when I put my wrench into a bundle of live cables (a stupid thing to do, really, even if they were insulated) and found one that had gotten just a tad bit of rubber stripped off. It was unlucky for you that I wasn’t found until they finally serviced furnace eighteen and got her working. The factory smelled like burnt roast, and upon further investigation, they realized that it was really burnt Marcus.”  
Camdyn’s face was twisted into a look of shock, fear, and disgust, but she allowed him to continue. It was horrifying and interesting and relieving and upsetting all at once, and she wanted to let him finish.  
“She went against everything she stood for to uphold everything she stood for, Camdyn, and that hurt her badly. I rather think that was why she became so ill. She felt a loss of purpose. How could she claim to so love a certain set of principles, yet be so ready to cross out of them in their defense?”  
He remained quiet, almost as though he felt sorry for her. Camdyn took a slow breath to steady herself.  
“Why… why did she die, though? It doesn’t make sense.”  
“Ah,” said the thing that was Almost Papa, once again flashing her that grin of malice and contrivance. “That, you will soon find out.”  
And it was gone. Or, perhaps, he was gone. Camdyn could not quite be sure. She was also quite unsure that these images— these awful visions —would ever really stop and give way to reality. If this wasn’t it, which she was almost positive it wasn’t. It could just be that I’m going out of my head, Camdyn thought to herself, surprisingly accepting of the idea. Wouldn’t be all that bad, I guess, not to have to deal with being a real, responsible person.  
CLICK- CLICK  
The bolt on the white metal door sprung from its catch, and it creaked open, revealing blackness. From the blackness came the sound of approaching footsteps. The echoed into the tiny, white room for some time before the source of the sound actually stepped into the light. Glossy, black leather shoes, a charcoal gray suit with a white shirt and a rich, purple tie. Blonde hair, full and thick, slicked back and coated with gel. An artificial face, pumped full of beauty toxins and pinched back by surgeries. A false smile that revealed teeth so white that they must have been false. Staggeringly blue eyes. Painfully blue. Sapphire or Azure or whatever shade Camdyn could think of, all wrapped up into one little circlet of light and… something else. Something cold. Something fraught with disapproval and hatred and indignant pride. Something swallowed back that forced itself up to the eyes to peer out and judge the world. All these things added up to the most beautiful man that Camdyn had ever seen. So beautiful and so perfect and so flawless. Barely human.  
He entered the room and stopped, turning to close the door, carefully, courteously, but not quite kindly. After ensuring that it wouldn’t creak back open, he turned to face Camdyn in her spot on the bed and flashed her that dazzling smile. Before he had a chance to speak, Camdyn addressed him.  
“Are you real? Because if you aren’t, then I don’t think I’ve got the time to talk to you.”  
He chuckled, almost warmly.  
“Ah, Miss Alethea. I’m the most real thing you’ve experienced all day.”  
Camdyn scowled.  
“Then you aren’t real,” she growled, annoyed.  
“Ah, but I am a real person,” he countered coolly, looking down at himself with a glimmer of vanity. “My name is Arx. Arx Mendacium. I am the heart of the Republic.”  
Camdyn thought about this for an uncomfortable length of time before replying.  
“I thought we were ruled by some kind of Council,” she said flatly.  
“Ah,” he replied, “but the Council answers to the Triumvirate.”  
This was rather odd to Camdyn. She wondered why they didn’t ever mention a Triumvirate in the lessons at the Education Center.  
“I’ve never heard of that,” Camdyn offered, doing her best to sound flippant and unconcerned.  
“No…” he murmured. “We operate a bit… under the radar, to put it plainly.”  
“Alright,” Camdyn intoned. “So you’re a Triumvirate all by yourself, are you? Sounds like an awful workload.”  
He sighed, slightly annoyed by her disregard and lack of interest.  
“No,” he explained. “I have two brothers. Kay Mendacium and Arilm Mendacium. We have been shaping this nation and its future since its birth, Camdyn.”  
Within, Camdyn’s interest and curiosity were swirling about excitedly, but she kept them down and merely remarked;  
“That’s an awful long time.”  
Arx nodded, then looked around.  
“Camdyn, do you know where you are?”  
Camdyn shook her head.  
“All I know is that it’s not reality,” she replied with a shrug, looking around her at all the blindingly perfect whiteness.  
“Clever girl,” mused Arx, looking at her with an expression that almost seemed to resemble admiration. “You’re in your head, Camdyn. Now, of course, not all of these are your thoughts, but this is definitely your head.”  
He, too, looked around at the cell and then patted the wall gently. Almost affectionately.  
“…quite lovely, if I’m perfectly honest. Maybe a bit gruesome at times, but quite the modern marvel.”  
Camdyn looked around.  
“The cell?” she inquired slowly.  
Arx Mendacium chuckled.  
“No, darling,” he purred. “You. Your mind. What you’ve created here. All we did was introduce the basic concepts and you went flying with them. Brilliant. …Just, brilliant.” He uttered the last word in a tone that reminded Camdyn of someone receiving a backrub or tasting something decadent. Laced with pleasure.  
Camdyn scowled at the well- dressed intruder.  
“Go away,” she commanded him, turning childishly to face the wall.  
He chuckled again, much more coldly this time. Vaguely reminiscent of the laugh that Camdyn’s father had laughed mere minutes earlier. Shaking his head, he came to sit on the bed beside Camdyn, putting a cold, heavy hand on her sleight shoulder.  
“Camdyn,” he intoned, his voice growing deeper and more serious, a sneer audible in his tone as he spoke. “If I did that, everything you ever knew would cease to exist. I am your entire world.”  
Camdyn shut her eyes and curled up on the bed, doing her best to ignore him and his words. To her surprise, he stood up.  
“I’ll go, Camdyn. But, rest in perfect assurance that you’ll see me soon. Quite soon.”  
With this, he strode out the door and shut it carefully behind him, his formal shoes tap- tapping on the blackness as he walked away. Alone in the white cell, Camdyn actively denied anything and everything she had just experienced. None of it was real. None of it happened. None of it was her own mind. None of it could have possibly been from her. No, no, no.  
Lies, lies, lies.

CHAPTER EIGHT  
A man finds worth in many ways, But are those where his value lays? Trusting in his strength or charm, Can only bring a man to harm.  
Every citizen of the Agricultural Districts was required by the Republic Officials to take an Aptitude Exam, by which the State determined whether any specific citizen was fit for additional development beyond a full understanding of the Statutes and Regulations governing their lives and a basic understanding of the manual labor required of them. In the Metropolis, this was done by profiling and sorting, but the Agricultural Districts produced far fewer candidates for additional development, and a simple written exam filtered out the worthy from the rest. It was not common for a citizen to pass the exam, however, doing so was not necessarily hailed as a great achievement. To pass the exam simply meant that one would most likely be whisked away from one’s family to a training center of some nature and would never come back nor see any of one’s friends and family. Of course, there were several occupations that one could merit training in which would allow one to return home. Water- Purification System Specialists, highly skilled Mechanics, Timeline Maintenance Engineers, and Medical Examiners with A- Class Surgical Operation Training were generally permitted to return to their homes to practice their crafts. However, these were a select few of the available jobs, in addition to being the most difficult to qualify for. So, when a thick brown envelope with the exam results of Alces Louis Fluminis arrived to the family cubicle, his parents could only sit stiffly and worriedly on their common- room’s bench, staring at it with dry, unblinking eyes as they waited for him to return home with his brothers from the rye fields.  
Laughing, Alces returned Marco’s playful roughhousing by shoving him off the edge of the road, into the small ditch that edged it. Suddenly, Jensen was behind him, trying to lock his arms around his oldest brother’s neck, laughing at Marco as he dragged himself— now coated in a thick layer of dusty ash— from the ditch and back onto the road. The three young men romped and wrestled and shoved and struck and grappled fiercely as they slowly made their way back to the barracks from the fields, hollering and guffawing all the while. This slowed them down considerably, especially considering that they were forced to stop and tightly bind Jensen’s left wrist with his canteen strap after it got caught between Alces’s and Marco’s locked arms and jerked backwards as Marco tried to spin away from Alces. After that, they walked three abreast, Jensen’s empty canteen now hanging with Alces’s on the strap across his chest, clunking hollowly against both Alces and his canteen. They grinned vaguely as they went and, every so often, would rocket into another round of hearty laughter at something small, like Marco stumbling on a stone, or at seemingly nothing at all.  
They burst through the cubicle door, still jostling one another and flinging insults as best they could, and were met with the sight of their parents. Since none of the three young men had yet taken a wife, they still lived in the same cubicle as their parents did, which was an Agrarian tradition rather than one crafted by the Republic, however, each man did have his own sleeping quarters, as the family had moved to a larger grade cubicle as the sons had come of age. As they burst into the little commons- room, and as each one caught sight of his parents, they realized that there was something wrong. They ceased their roughhousing and stood still, waiting for one of their parents to say something.  
After a short while of stiff silence, Mrs. Fluminis turned and plucked the envelope, addressed to Alces, from the seat on the bench beside her, extending it out with trembling fingers to the boy— now, a man— who she loved so well. He stepped forward and took it, gently breaking the glue seal on the flap before drawing out a piece of paper which was of a brighter shade of white than anything in the Agricultural Districts. In the upper right- hand corner it bore the Republic’s Crest— an eagle, wings spread and clutching a hammer tightly in both talons— and across it were several lines of typewritten text. In bold, however, near the bottom of the page blazed a phrase that made Alces’s heart leap.  
CANDIDATE FOR MEDICAL EXAMINER TRAINING  
He grinned and glanced up at his parents, who still looked terrified. With a flourish, he handed them the page and turned to face his brothers.  
“I ship out in three days for Medical Examiner’s training. You better enjoy me now, because it’s going to be two years before you see me again.”  
They glanced at each other then back at him as he turned to face his parents once more. His mother’s eyes were moist already, and his father’s arm was swung instinctively around her in a comforting and warm way. Alces’s grin faded slightly and he stepped forward to hug his dear mother, not bothering to say anything because he knew that nothing he could say would be able to comfort her. He felt that she was being a bit silly, of course, but to say so would be rude and imprudent, so he merely hugged her close and let her worry. Two years wouldn’t be so long. Not if he was guaranteed a position here in the village. After several minutes, he let her go and moved into his own sleeping quarters. After he had gathered up his towel and change of clothes, he made his way down to the public restrooms to shower— his favorite part of the day— and to think.  
The public restrooms were, at this time of day, generally full of other workers, scrubbing the dust and grime and sweat from their aching bodies before they collapsed onto their sleeping mats to wait for sunlight and more work. He stood under the stream of water, vacant and unaware of his surroundings, wondering what it would be like to train in the medical field. He knew of course, that not many real injuries bled through to the Main Timeline, but some did and needed treating. He wondered if this would make his future a dull one, filled with waiting around for something awful to happen. He supposed he would be able to help his people live healthier, for they would trust him over some obscure Metropolis outsider shipped in to treat their ills. But he was disappointed to have to leave the fields and the mountains. They were a part of him to his core. The places where he had truly come to know and love his brothers. The places that grew him from boyhood. The places where he had discovered himself to have graduated to manhood. The places where he could think and work and be useful. All he hoped in this new chapter of his life was to be useful. Not to be a pointless waste of space. To help. To work. That was what made him tick.  
Soon, he shook his head, flicking droplets of lukewarm water in every direction, towel- dried, and donned his fresh clothes. He gathered the clothes he had worn out that day, which he had left soaking in a washtub, wrung and shook them out, and made his way back to his cubicle, desperately hoping not to be turned into something useful. 

CHAPTER NINE  
A balcony without a wall, Can cause both babe and man to fall, In lack of bounds, such freedoms lie, For who’d go out when up so high?   
*WHACK*  
Camdyn hit her head on the curved wall of glass just inches above her face, then recoiled to nurse her now- injured nose. Looking left and right, she discovered that she was laying on a bed of neoplasticine faux- leather, wide and long enough for a grown man, walled- in with whirring steel machinery and covered with a thick, curved glass roof, through which Camdyn could see naught save the white- tiled ceiling and the glaring lamp on a crooked steel arm which hung above her. Readjusting her focus, she saw that there were handprints covering the inside of the glass wall, scraping and dragging across its surface, and as she strained her neck to look around further, she felt a tug at the skin on her right temple, running down and along her face, stopping halfway to her mouth. Concerned, she reached up with her right hand to feel at the foreign object. It was a small piece of metal, molded in the exact shape of the curvature of her temple and cheekbone which was attached by a sort of sticky rubber. She peeled the object off and saw that it was attached to several wires which disappeared in the whirring machinery all around her. In addition, it had several nodes that sunk all the way through the rubber, which were warm and gave a strange buzzing or vibrating when she touched them. She reached up to her face and felt at the spots which corresponded to the nodes and discovered tiny burn marks which seemed to be from over- exposure.  
Oddly enough, she did not feel panicked. She let the piece of machinery drop onto the bed next to her and swept her hand up to her face to neaten her bangs. But they were not there. She sighed and looked down at herself only to discover that the fitted, red jumpsuit remained, then let her head slump down onto the bed in emotional exhaustion.  
Suddenly, a loud clicking noise resounded in the small space and startled Camdyn. She could see a blurred figure standing over the glass wall above her, working with its hands at the latches that held Camdyn in. With a soft swoosh, the black rubber seal around the edges glass wall loosed itself from its locked hold and allowed the wall to swing upward and to Camdyn’s left on its hinges. Above Camdyn stood another man in a gray suit. It was not Arx Mendacium, however, but a man who closely resembled him. He smiled a practiced, formulaic smile and put his hands on the edge of the bed as Camdyn pulled herself to a sitting position.  
“Welcome to the waking world, Miss Camdyn Layne Alethea,” he offered, not unkindly.  
Camdyn nodded slowly, then asked;  
“Where was I?”  
The man’s eyebrows shot up in surprise that she had been ignorant of her whereabouts, and he leaned in to explain it.  
“Mmm. I thought Arx said he’d mention that to you. …You’ve heard of a Sensory Projection Center?” he asked slowly, as though Camdyn was especially thick or hard of hearing.  
“Yes,” she breathed, suddenly beginning to understand.  
“Well,” said the man “this is a neural regulator. You were experiencing a reflection of your own mind and its natural responses to small doses of introduced stimuli. It’s an excellent way to get to know oneself. Honestly.”  
He stroked the side of the machine with as near an air of affection that a man could have for an object and yet still be taken seriously at all. Camdyn nodded and stared distractedly at his hand.  
“And you are…?” she prompted, pulling her eyes away from his petting of the machine to look into his eyes— startlingly blue.  
“I am Arelm Mendacium, second brother of the Triumvirate,” replied the false- faced, well- dressed man.  
“Tell me,” Camdyn began, tucking her legs up underneath her in an attempt to seem comfortable and haughty, “what have I done to attract the attention of so esteemed a council as the Triumvirate? At this point, I’m merely an orphan and my sister—“  
Camdyn stopped. As much as the realization pained her, she discovered that she had completely forgotten about Jaxi Jay until just now. She tried to choke out the rest of her originally planned sentence, failed miserably, and merely resorted to a confusedly distraught expression to complete her query of the suited man.  
He flashed that same smile again and chuckled at her, which she found very annoying rather than intimidating. Everyone was chuckling at her all the time. It was frustrating and belittling.  
“Camdyn, darling,” he purred, “you have been a person of interest since your conception. You parents were persons of interest before you. Anyone with such conviction as theirs was sure to cause trouble eventually, even if it was indirect.”  
He put an extra push of emphasis on this last word and eyed Camdyn as though they were sharing a secret or a private joke. She recoiled and sat with a pained look on her face. They sat looking at one another for a while, which also served to irritate Camdyn. So many pauses in the conversation. So much chuckling. So much accursed secrecy.  
“What do you want?” she demanded, finally.  
Arelm looked insulted.  
“I want you to understand what you’ve done,” he explained gravely. “What you could do. What we’re concerned you’ll do.”  
Camdyn huffed.  
“You could just tell me directly,” she offered, still frustrated. “All this cryptic nonsense is the most inefficient way of communicating that I have ever had the displeasure to take part in.” She was quite proud of her sentence. It sounded intelligent and eloquent, yet direct, and she resolved to try to speak in such a way henceforth.  
“Ah, Camdyn, you don’t seem to understand,” Arelm sighed, leaning back from the neural regulator. “We have been communicating more efficiently with you than you can possibly imagine. Now, I must insist that you come with me. We’ve decided to enter you into the Peace Corps and there is quite a bit of introductory material that you must learn before you are inducted.”  
She gave a tiny gasp. The Peace Corps?! Peace Corpse is more like it. She knew that this was to teach her some kind of lesson. Somehow. Women were rarely considered qualified by the Republic to serve in the Peace Corps, and those who were, were required to be seventeen years of age and finished with their Education Program. Camdyn’s throat tightened as she considered ground she would have to make up in the training program just to match the skill of any other fresh recruit. It did not make sense, so Camdyn took to glaring at Arelm, which, of course did nothing. He merely smiled that artificial, hand- constructed smile and set himself at little table nearby, pouring out a milky, white liquid from a conical flask and into a small cup. He handed the cup to Camdyn, and, still grinning, said;  
“Here, child. Drink this. It will help get you flowing again. These neural regulators tend to put our detainees on edge.”  
Camdyn knew full well that this was because of the disturbing images and scenarios she’d been subjected to, not some silly neural flow sickness. Nonetheless, she took the small, silvery cup and began to sip from it. The drink filled her mouth with a buttery, warm flavor, its richness sticking to her tongue and to the sides of her mouth as she sipped at it. It was so rich, in fact, that it began to make Camdyn feel more ill than before she’d had it, but Arelm was watching her intently, so she continued to draw at the cup, grateful that he had poured her a fairly small portion. Once she had finished, she leaned off of the neural regulator and set the cup on the tiny table, then glanced at Arelm.  
“Shall we?” he commanded, more than inquired, as he turned towards the door.  
With a sigh, Camdyn swung her legs, tinging from disuse, over the side of the odd little bed and slid off, her black sock- clad feet making a tiny, soft echo as she walked over to the door, where a pair of Corpsman’s boots had been set. Sighing, she forced them on, noting how well they fitted her, and turned to follow Arelm out. A long, hallway, lit dimly for lack of use (these must be after- hours, Camdyn thought), and a door at the end. Outside the door, a glossy black sedan and a suited attendant, waiting to pull the car door open for her. Camdyn passed through the door, and when she turned to she whether Arelm would be joining her she discovered that he had vanished.  
So, she turned to look around the car, only to be met by Arelm, sitting beside her. Odd, she thought, I didn’t hear the car door. The man smiled and looked into her eyes questioningly.  
“I am Kay Mendacium,” he delineated, slowly, carefully. “I am the eldest brother of the Triumvirate.”  
Camdyn sighed.  
“What is the point of having three of you, if you’re all the same?” she demanded quite rudely, huffing at him and childishly turning to stare out of the deeply tinted windshield as the car began to heave forward. It was strange to be in a vehicle for the second time when Camdyn had only ever ridden in the open- aired trailer with her classmates on the way to visit a surviving bomb site as a history lesson.  
“We, the Triumvirate, Camdyn,” continued Kay, “are a reflection of the one component of this society that makes it function so smoothly. Homogeneity. Oneness.”  
Camdyn nodded her head. She had heard enough of the Educational Lectures on Oneness to understand Kay’s meaning. The instructors had even taught Camdyn, along with all her fellow- pupils, to repeat “I am, because we are,” in monotone. Over and over. Camdyn, in recollection, sighed.  
“I am, because we are,” she informed Kay, demonstrating her knowledge on the subject.  
“Excellent, Camdyn,” Kay remarked, delighted. “Now, tell me. What are the three key points of unity in our Blessed Republic?”  
Camdyn racked her brains and bit her lip as she did so.  
“I have no idea,” she finally admitted, in all humble honesty.  
Kay nodded.  
“That’s because you don’t know them in your head. You understand the concepts, but not as they’re spelled out into words. The three key concepts of unity are Intellectual Unity, Actional Unity, and Relational Unity.”  
Camdyn nodded slowly, bracing herself as the sedan swung around a corner, processing the information, and Kay continued.  
“We must be unified Intellectually,” he explained, tapping his temple with one finger, “so that when we attempt to work as a unit, we will be able to approach issues as a whole body. We could not have created this world, prepared for it, in the Time Before, if we had been squabbling over which foods, people, and elements of culture would be best to preserve. We were all in agreement over which was best for us all, which led to the next key point: Actional Unity. Because we have intellectual unity, we are able to express it through Actional Unity. Unity of purpose. Unity of effort. We accomplish all things that we consider through Intellectual Unity by channeling into Actional Unity. Finally, our Relational Unity serves to dictate the way we interact with out fellow citizens. We need not. Because we are Intellectually and Actionally One, our Relational Unity is expressed in our lack of necessity of interaction. Do you understand this, Camdyn?”  
Camdyn nodded. None of what he had said was news to her, really. It had all been expressed to her before. Just, not in such detail or uniformity. It felt strange to have her latent thought expressed so efficiently. Why had she before so struggled to articulate the values taught by the nation in which she’d lived her whole life? It seemed as though they just… were. Innately and naturally were, despite her vague understanding that they oughtn’t be.  
“Look,” Kay Mendacium suddenly said. “I do believe that this is the farthest from your barracks you’ve ever been, Camdyn.”  
She looked out the dark window of the sedan with mild interest, and was suddenly gripped by the scene that lay before her.  
The car was stopped outside the city, atop the plateau on which the Metropolis perched. A barren, gray- and- black landscape, sprawling from horizon to horizon below her, blew with swirling gusts of dry wind that drew ashes and dust in spinning circles and trails across its desolate face. Behind her, the gates and walls of the Metropolis stood resolute. Commanding. Imposing. She looked from the wide open space to the gates and back. This was the farthest reach of openness that she had ever beheld and it terrified her. Her heart plucked up its tempo and her palms began to sweat as she drew her eyes from the scene and burrowed herself deeply into the seat of the sedan.  
Kay seemed to draw some kind of sick pleasure from her discomfort, and motioned to the driver to continue. Camdyn had known at one point that the Corpsman Training Center was not within the bounds of the Metropolis’s walls, but had completely forgotten about it when she’d gotten into the car with Kay.  
They sped along a well-kept roadway— a pale strip in the charcoal blackness— and Camdyn recognized it as the Southeast Road, by which the shipments full of hybridized rye grains and bales of nanogenetic cotton came in from the Agricultural Districts. The only road to and from the Metropolis besides the West Road, by which shipments of certain fruits, vegetables, and minerals came in for development from the distant— and meagerly populated— Western Districts. As they whizzed by, putting at least two miles behind them in each minute they drove, Camdyn watched the landscape. Uniform. Unchanging. One. Perfectly homogeneous.  
She sighed as she checked out the front window to behold a tiny speck on the horizon, which was accelerating towards them at a tiny bit of a faster rate than Camdyn would have expected, but not too noticeably so. As an attempt to distract herself, she began to count the seconds between each time Kay blinked. He had diverted his attention from her and was now gazing out of the windshield. He waited an unnaturally long time between his blinks and Camdyn was quite amused by this. The longest pause was nearly a full five minutes as he stared intently at the uniform grayness. Finally, he spoke.  
“Camdyn, why do you suppose that the world has gone so gray?”  
Camdyn could tell by his tone that it was a leading question. One with an expected answer. Camdyn gave him the only answer she could come up with.  
“Because of the Cataclysm?”  
It was more of a question than an answer.  
“Why, yes.” Kay looked at her as though he was proud of her accomplishment, then continued. “Because of the great strife of mankind. Conflict, Camdyn, inevitably ends here. In perfect grayness. What you have not yet understood is that conflict is a fatal disease. After such a virus is introduced to single body, the only way to stop the spread of that virus to the many is to kill the infected body and the virus with it. Hence, when conflict is introduced to a society, the only way to stop its spread is to kill that body by which the virus survives. This concept, of course, is the reason why The Perfection was developed. To avoid the government’s need to be directly involved in each and every affair of its constituents, so that they may avoid conflict of their own accord. As a government, we cannot completely control everything that happens, a fact that you are well aware of, Miss Alethea, so we gave the Collective Timeline a certain ability to be edited. To be shifted away from the disease of conflict. Of strife. Of the incorrect. It is a system that makes our Timeline extremely complex, yet unmarred. Does this make sense to you, Camdyn?”  
She nodded solemnly.  
“Then you understand,” he continued, “what we are doing in bringing you to the Corpsman Training Center. You are a bright mind, Camdyn. We would hate to have to eradicate you.”  
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise at the directness of his approach, but she slowly nodded and mumbled acknowledgement. She dared not say anything, for fear of causing Kay to misinterpret her and subsequently to ignite that eradication process. She was henceforth quiet, and sat in silence for nearly three additional hours before she could make out the black speck.  
Eventually, the sedan slid quietly into one of three empty cargo truck- sized parking spaces, and the driver cut the engine. Camdyn looked around her. Rather than being encompassed by concrete- brick walls that so blocked one’s view, or even by chain- link fence topped with curling wisps of barbed wire, or even by mere a post- and- razor- wire fence, the Corpsman Training Center was open to the elements completely. Nothing in any direction. Only gray, concrete buildings in rows, and one black tower that loomed over every other building. Camdyn turned around only to discover that she could not even see the Metropolis any longer. The great expanse was kept these Corpsman in. They daren’t venture out into it, because there was nothing by which to care for themselves in it. Not water, nor food, nor shelter for days upon weeks upon months in any direction. The freedom that they had was their true imprisonment. Being outside the walls, free from the barricades, unbound from the bonds of the Metropolis, they were more trapped than anyone had ever been by the Republic.  
And now, Camdyn was as trapped as they were. As desolate of hope as was the landscape and as trapped by it as those who dwelt there. 

CHAPTER TEN  
To take the self of man away, To alter that he thinks and wills, Is murder in a subtle way, For as he lives, himself he kills.  
The Head Corpsman Training Official, known as Commander Third- Class Corale, one of the few high-ranking officials left to use his own name as opposed to his Citizen Identification Number, stood solidly on his pedestal in the open air before the troop assembly. There was an assembly each day at this time, and Commander Corale had just received notification that a new recruit was to be brought before the assembly. This was not the usual manner in which Commander Corale’s assemblies generally proceeded, and this set him slightly on edge, but the notification had come from Kay Mendacium himself. The Commander had been introduced by his superiors to Kay, Arelm, and Arx Mendacium on the day he had been promoted to his current rank. All those of the rank Commander and above were called upon to truly revere the Triumvirate as his Commander- In- Chief and as his source of governing power. To receive a notification from Kay, and to have him coming to his own Training Center was a true honor, if not a slight frustration. Commander Corale was a lover of schedules, of time- tables, of clock management, of procedural proceedings, and of a nearly ritualistic lifestyle, and as he stood before the assembly of recruits, his slight frustration made it through to the surface in small ways. He rocked back and forth on his heels slightly when he spoke. He perspired an iota more than was usual. He even sneezed several times, which surprised the recruits, firstly, because they had never heard him do so before, and secondly, because it was a slightly feminine and high- pitched sneeze which did not make it any easier to respect him.  
“And so,” he delineated to the expansive formation of purplish gray uniforms before him, his voice not aided by any audio- projection technology, but amplified merely by the great steel satellite that stood behind him. “I am pleased with your progress in the field of marksmanship this week. This skill is rarely needed, but is part of the tradition we are part of, as a unit of this Corps. You bring honor and pride to those before you, and to the Republic that you serve.”  
Corpsman Number 809050, a recruit with darker hair and paler eyes and older bones than most, leaned over to Corpsman Number 093458, a female recruit whose black eyes contrasted heavily with her pale skin and her fair hair— which seemed quite transparent when cut so closely, giving the appearance that she was utterly bald, yet she was not homely— and whispered that he could sense something was quite out of place with the Commander. It was rare for troops to lean and whisper when in assembly, but Corpsman Number 809050 felt that it was a special occasion. Without turning her delicate head toward him or even inclining an ear a centimeter closer, she consented with a slight drop of the chin and darkening of the brow. Something was amiss and she did not like it one bit.  
Now, these two recruits were by far the most expressive of the lot. Every other troop stood, solid, proud, unblinking, staring into the back of the head in front of them. Rarely did an eyelid flitter, a throat clear, or a nostril sniff. The troops breathed in and out slowly, in the same tempo. They had been taught to match tempo with the recruits in front and to their left, allowing the leftmost, frontmost recruit set the rhythm. It created a terrifyingly unified atmosphere. Unnaturally one. Unnaturally joined. The air drew back and forth palpably with each heave of chest and lung.  
By this was Camdyn Layne Alethea greeted. The air around the formation of troops, a congregation which seemed to go on for miles beyond the great courtyard, drew in and out. In and out. Pushing and pulling. It set Camdyn on edge. Made her uncomfortable. She set the tempo of her breath to match theirs, which gave her a slight sense of ease, but not by much. Kay had surrendered her to an attendant at the door of the car and had sent her off with an oddly fond farewell. She was drawn onto the stage- like pedestal by the Corpsman attendant and placed beside the important- looking man who stood there. He barely acknowledged her, continuing with his speech about troop progress and training. After he completed his thoughts on the necessity of each troop maintaining a consistent six-minute time on his or her mile run, he gave a slight sigh, and turned to face Camdyn, who stood before him, eyed by the attendant with disapproval, as if he expected her to cause trouble already.  
“This,” barked the important- looking man, “is recruit Alethea. She is a bit late to our training cycle, but she has been hand-selected by the Blessed Republic to join our Corps.”  
All eyes turned to Camdyn, who nearly toppled over under the weight of the stares. She began to sweat nervously. She did not belong here and she knew it. The troops knew it. The attendant knew it. The Commander knew it. Camdyn was quite sure that Kay, Arelm, and Arx knew it, too. In discomfort, Camdyn reached up to fidget with her braid, pulling it in front of her and running her hands down it one after the other repeatedly. She felt as though the troops were all waiting for her to say something, so she gave the only phrase that came to her mind.  
“Hail the Republic.”  
As one, the recruits heaved a breath and replied in perfect chorus:  
“Hail its Benevolence.”  
They were all still staring at her, and Camdyn could tell that many of them were eying her braid with suspicion. She tossed it back behind her shoulder and clasped her hands in front of her in extreme discomfort. She was all wrong. Long hair, red jumpsuit, late to the training cycle, too young to enlist, and not in formation. A tortured sigh escaped her body, and she began to fidget with her hands. Commander Corale seemed to sense the girl’s utter hatred and discomfort, and, being a man who was not unreasonable, he ordered the attendant to take her to the Supply Sector and get her in uniform. The attendant nodded and turned to leave, checking over his shoulder to make sure she was following. She was.  
Within the hour, Camdyn was standing before the farthest bunk from the door, closest to the far wall, in the female barracks, clothed in the purplish- gray uniform of the Peace Corpsman. The boots were surprisingly comfortable, if not heavy, and the accompanying standard-issue undershirt and shorts were a nice change compared to her old ones, even if they did shift beneath the uniform if she moved just so. Newer. Softer. The supply clerk had shoved a scratchy blanket, seven pairs of socks, a handkerchief, a Compact Personal Timeline Module, a patrol cap, and a pillow into her arms and had rudely slammed the supply counter widow. The attendant silently marched Camdyn to her new bunk, which was situated in a long, narrow room of them, and had promptly left. Camdyn now stood, arms still full, staring at the bunk, and at the room, pondering.  
There was not much left to think.  
The Republic had truly rent her from her sister, and Camdyn was positive that she would never see her again. With a frustrated sigh, she began to step forward, when her Compact Personal Timeline Module gave an unpleasant buzz. Shifting the rest of her things to one arm, she grabbed it and flicked it open.  
WATCH YOUR HEAD. THAT TOP BUNK IS LOWER THAN IT SEEMS.  
She grinned, despite herself, and bent low to toss her affects onto the squeaky mattress, laying the blanket at the foot end and the pillow at the head end. Once she had arranged her socks and handkerchief and Compact Personal Timeline Module in the canvas pockets which hung down from the top bunk on the foot end of the bed, she lay down on her back. Clasping her hands together, she closed her eyes and attempted to sleep.  
Her rest was very quickly interrupted by a group of female recruits, who did not bother to soften their footsteps or to make gentle their slamming of doors or to lighten their jerking on the squeaky metal bed-frames. Not many of them spoke, but their heavy boots made a considerable ruckus of thuds and whacks on the bare concrete floor. One of them, a seventeen- or- eighteen- year- old recruit who’s eyes were more green than any eyes Camdyn had ever seen, walked up and stood over Camdyn for several seconds. Camdyn, unsure of what she should do, sat up and turned to face her.  
“I’m Gretlyn, but everyone calls me Gret” she offered, not unkindly, but with a measured efficiency.  
“I’m Camdyn Layne,” replied the younger girl, shifting uncomfortably.  
Gret looked around at her fellow Corpsman, then back to Camdyn.  
“Most of us around here use our given names. Too many numbers to keep track of. I think we’ll call you Cam.”  
She turned over her shoulder and hollered to all the others behind her.  
“Hey! Ladies!”  
They all quieted down and turned to stare at Camdyn with mild interest.  
“Listen up,” Gret barked. She was obviously a leader in some manner, even if not by rank. “This is Cam.” Gret turned to Camdyn and looked at her intently, as though expecting something, so Camdyn offered up a hand, waving a salutation.  
“How old are you?” one rather thick and burly recruit asked distastefully from across the barracks.  
Camdyn cleared her throat and replied that she was merely seven months beyond twelve years.  
“How’d you get in the program, then?” another girl who Camdyn couldn’t see called.  
“I was placed here by decree of several Republic Officials. Both of my parents died and they deemed this most beneficial to me.”  
Each of the troopswomen nodded. If the Officials deemed it so, then let it be so. Despite their acceptance of the Officials’ ruling, Camdyn felt that they did not necessarily accept her fully. She felt out of place and alone, despite the mass of older girls that surrounded her. She sighed and laid back down, curling up and facing the wall. The older ones all seemed to take this as a sing that the conversation was over and went about their business. Some chatted vaguely. Some mended their uniforms. Some simply sat and stared. Many slept. The free time was a welcome and well- needed rest, and Camdyn could feel them relishing it. She wished desperately to be able to relish it, but, of course, she could not. All she felt was pain and loneliness. Longing for Momma, for Papa, and for Jaxi Jay. This is all so completely unfair, she thought, instantly feeling juvenile for having thought so. Nothing is ever going to be fair, Camdyn Layne Alethea. Not now. Not ever. Not for anyone. With a sigh, she shut her eyes tight and tried to get some rest.  
The next morning, Camdyn jolted stiffly awake to the sound of a metallic buzzing. The recruits all around her were shoving their feet into their boots and doing the zippers of their uniform jackets. No one said anything, but merely labored in preparation for something. Camdyn followed suit. She pulled on her patrol cap, which fit snugly, and quickly re- braided her hair so that it would hold tightly and not hinder her. As she did so, the recruits all lined up, three abreast, before the door. They made a perfect unit of lines of three, and Camdyn was forced to stand alone, in a row to herself, in the rear. Gret heaved a three beat call from her gut and the recruits began to march in place. Camdyn struggled to match beat, but managed to get in step with the platoon just as they moved out of the barracks and into the open air. The tempo of the march was to slow for Camdyn too keep up with. If she marched in time, her shorter strides caused her to fall behind, which forced her to either take unnaturally long strides or quicken her pace and be out of step. She huffed and struggled, exasperated, desperately trying to keep up and to keep time. Her platoon lined itself up just beside platoon of male recruits, matching their spacing row for row, leaving the platoons undifferentiated from one another save for difference in gender from one row to another. Platoon after platoon lined up in this way, creating a great mass of troopsmen and women, just as Camdyn had seen the night before. She was in a platoon which had lined itself up in the very back of the enormous formation, and she came to realize that she was the only extra person in all the camp. Each platoon consisted of ten rows of three. No more, no less. She was the only thirty-first recruit. Her face reddened slightly as she caught several of the others glancing over at her in confusion. There oughtn’t be anyone there. What was the strange little girl thinking? Despite the upright and rigid posture of every recruit around her, she dropped her head and tugged her cap as far down her face as it would slide. She slouched downward, hoping to become invisible, and felt her face become even hotter with embarrassment. She was only relieved of her torment when Commander Corale’s booming voice came resounding through the stoniness of camp.  
“Today, Corpsman,” he called, “as you well know, is chores day. Building four- seventy- nine was stuck by dry lightning last week and is in need of repairs. Your task is to clear away the rubble and reconstruct the parts of the east wall and roof that were destroyed. After you have completed this task, you are to run four miles for conditioning. You may then have your midday meal, and report back here for further instructions. Platoon leaders, the specific roles which you and your recruits must perform will be uploaded to your Compact Personal Timeline Modules. Dismissed!”  
At this point, the great hordes of recruits massed together into huddles by platoon, to review their specialized orders. Gretlyn, obviously the platoon leader, whipped out her Module, checked the update, and instantly shot a glare in Camdyn’s direction. Confused, Camdyn cocked her head a bit to the right. Gretlyn looked up at her troops.  
“Rubble and Supply Transportation Detail,” she informed them, never using any unnecessary words.  
The recruits all nodded, but each one turned to eye Camdyn with disdain. It was so blatant a stare that Camdyn took a step back and choked out;  
“What?”  
The burly girl spoke up.  
“Rubble and Supply Transportation Detail is generally reserved for insubordinate platoons. Ours has been graced with privileged duties, such as Task Management and Timeline Update Record Balancing, as our platoon is elite and efficient. Until now, we have managed to work hard and keep out of unnecessary manual labor. We assume that this is a result of your arrival, Braided Girl.”  
Camdyn’s mouth hung open. She was bringing her punishment down onto these other girls. And for what? For seemingly nothing. She had not even committed a crime of her own to deserve this punishment. Not to mention, the burly girl’s monologue had been a bit of a shock, considering that Camdyn had only ever heard her speak in simple sentences. Finally, Gret reclaimed the silence, glancing over at the burly girl.  
“Thanks for clearing that up, Nat,” she growled, checking her Module once again.  
Nat grunted and shrugged flippantly.  
“Well, girls,” Gret sighed resolvedly, “gear up and move out.”  
Soon the small platoon was on task. Camdyn lifted concrete block after concrete block from the strike site to the hauling trucks, each block seemed as though it was trying to outdo the last in weight and difficulty to handle. She got many nicks and cuts on her hands and forearms, making the job even more the longer she did it. Back and forth, back and forth. Bend and grasp, heave and straighten. Step after step after painful step. Camdyn could not remember a time when her legs or arms or neck or back had ever been in so much pain, nor could she imagine having to perform such tasks day after day after day in this ashen wasteland. Sweat poured down her face and back as she strained at each load of rubble. Alongside her, the other members of the platoon heaved and lifted, yet were dry and devoid of even a drop of perspiration. Eventually, Camdyn’s control over her limbs began to wane. She could not look at her finger and will it to move, much less with her legs to go another step. But she dared not sit down, for fear of seeming lazy.  
Hence, Camdyn took up a shovel, which she knew would work a separate group of muscles than the one she had been exerting so long and so hard. She shoveled and scraped at the ash and dust that lay beneath the rubble, which could surely hinder the reconstruction process if it was not cleared away. She continued, shovelful by shovelful, to scrape away the gavel and rubble that so littered the area. The air soon became thick with ash and limestone dust as the teams continued to clear away the smashed concrete and the occasional metal window- bar or door- hinge. The rough wood of the shovel handle viciously ripped into the soft, pale skin on Camdyn’s palms, causing her to wince and to bleed more with every arc of the shaft. Her braid swung and gently tapped the center of her aching back with every beat of the shovel’s rhythm, a constant reminder.  
Different, different, different.  
Alone, alone, alone.  
Lies, lies, lies.  
As Camdyn struggled to continue the labor, she thought of the books of pre- cataclysmic philosophy and poetry that she had loved so well, in an attempt to distract herself. She thought about how Nietzsche had brought the avant-garde to his world. How he had shown the people to free their inhibition and look within themselves and to express what they found there. Camdyn though with wonder what horrible things they must have found within themselves to express. She wondered what the writers and artists of the avant-garde movement thought when they looked into themselves and saw only blackness and filth. She wondered if they found some way of ignoring the filth and replacing it with something else. Something more beautiful. Something beyond man. She thought of how her father had told her that a great man, called Dickens, had written that “[all] other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers,” and she wondered if those avant-garde artists were “swindlers of self,” deceiving themselves into thinking that there was something worth expressing within them. Camdyn had only once or twice in her life seen something worth expressing. Something worth writing about. Something worth painting or filming or singing about. The first time had been when she first held Jaxi Jay in her own arms. The second had been when she had watched her father and mother give up their own rations, to feed a sick neighbor in the barracks. The third had been when Camdyn’s mother had made her a dress for the first time, as a gift to her daughter on her tenth birthday. Those three times. The only three times in which Camdyn could find something worth expressing. The immeasurable wave of relief to understand that you have the capacity to love someone, even if they are someone so small. The undeniable flood of release when you discover that you are part of something— a family, a unit, anything, really— that cares. The overwhelming rush of peace that accompanies the discovery that someone loves you well enough— knows you well enough— to labor just to give you a mere trifle. A luxury. These things, Camdyn moaned in her mind as she heaved on the shovel’s abrasive wooden handle, these are the only things that are worth expressing. So, why aren’t they, here? Why aren’t they valued in this nation? What about them could possibly be so dangerous or—  
She was not permitted to finish her thought. A whistle blew and each member of Camdyn’s platoon went jogging off in one direction. Startled, Camdyn abandoned the shovel on the ashen ground and took off after them. As she labored to catch up, she suddenly realized that they were rushing towards a water- truck. A smile swept over her face, the prospect of hydration a welcome thought in her dry, aching body, which seemed as though would collapse into a pile of ash and dust at any moment. She soon reached the truck, but, stood patiently to wait for a turn at one of the many pumps. She was not granted one. Unsure if she should elbow her way in, she continued to wait patiently. After each pump had had several thirsty troops at its fount, and several more, and several more, Camdyn took a step forward into the crowd of dry Corpsmen that swarmed about the water. Promptly a rough hand, which could have stemmed from any number of the bodies swarming there, shoved her violently backward, and she toppled over onto the gray, dusty, and incommodious ground. She lay there for several long seconds, struggling to regain control over her winded lungs, struggling to cause them to expand and contract as was their usual business.  
Eventually, she steadied her breathing and righted herself. Unfortunately, the water truck pulled away from the work site, now drained, just as Camdyn made her way over to it— the lone straggler of the horde of swarming troops. All of the others had returned to their work, but Camdyn stood, jaw clenched, staring after the water truck and the cloud of ashen filth that it kicked up in its wake. A cloud of dust nearly as dry as Camdyn’s thirsty throat. With quiet resolve, she trod back to the shovel that lay abandoned in the rubble and began to heave, shovelful by shovelful, the gravel and debris into the back of the transport truck, to be removed from the camp and dumped deep in the barren ash- wastes.  
For five solid hours the troops worked steadily, and the water truck came once an hour. They moved rubble, brought in new bricks, mixed fresh mortar, laid the great blocks, and coated them with a layer of clear waterproofing sealant. By the third time the water truck made its rounds, Camdyn assertively shoved her way into the fray around the spigots and filled her belly with the cool liquid, which refreshed and revived her despite is metallic, possibly coppery taste. With the cracks in her lips healing, she weakly made her way back to her work, which had changed from shoveling debris to carrying stacks of two or three concrete blocks over to the bricklaying platoon, and making them available to be laid. The repairs had reached a height off of the ground which called for scaffolding to be erected, and it was, upon which point Camdyn realized that she would now have to climb up the scaffolding in order to make the bricks available to be laid. With a sigh, she took two blocks and began her first trek up the rickety, metal frame which clung like some sort of spidery leech to the side of the partially destroyed building. Up and down. Up and down. Stack after stack after stack. Arms now so shaky that they could only manage one block at a time, which forced the accompanying legs to climb more nimbly and more quickly. Brick after brick after brick. Legs so shaky that each step seemed an impossible feat. A victory, answered only with another battle beyond it. She felt that she would never make it until the midday meal.  
And she barely did. She was at the supply truck, leaning weakly against it, her frail body bent crooked and limp like a broken rye stalk, tossed into a heap before the great Republic threshing machine, when that shrill whistle blew. She heaved a sigh of relief and weakly made her way toward the group of troopswomen who she recognized as her assigned platoon, all of whom were as covered in dust and grime as she was, but not quite as drenched in sweat. Gret, turning to scan the area, spotted her and hailed her with a raised hand. Camdyn returned the gesture, and as she did, the members of her platoon suddenly took off at a run. She gasped, glancing left and right, only to discover that all of the other platoons were regrouping and starting off at a brisk pace. Camdyn’s throat went dry as she realized that a four mile run was the precursor to the midday meal. With her throat tightening in pure dismay, she summoned every ounce of strength she had left and began to jog. Instantly, she felt dizzy. Camdyn had not had a suitable size ration in at least a year, since Jaxi had begun to grow and Camdyn had begun to fork over some of her own rye meal to feed the darling girl. It took every iota of physical and mental strength that she had left to even put one foot in front of the other in a steady rhythm, yet Camdyn felt herself becoming dizzier and weaker by the second. As she strained, now a solid ten minutes into the run, far behind any of the other troops, and quite far outside the camp, she realized that she was feeling something else new for the first time: wind. The breeze was stiff and dry, not necessarily with great force, but it was a sensation that pulled to the forefront of Camdyn’s mind that blockading openness. That constraining liberty. That encompassing freedom which surrounded the camp on every side. And as her legs gave way, long before her spirit would have, Camdyn fell to the ground feeling terrified that there no walls around her now. No regulations to protect her. Merely openness.  
She woke up on a squeaky mattress much like the one that she had slept on in her bunk the night before. A Medical Examiner- In- Training —who must have been about twenty- five or so, with piercingly bright green eyes and a face darkened by thick, black shadow— stood over her, attentively, holding aloft some sort of object that seemed to glow as it dangled from his hand. As she blinked and readjusted her eyes, she found that he actually held a neoplasticine pouch full of a clear liquid, which was refracting the white light of the lamp in the corner. From this pouch dangled a gossamer- thin tube, which connected to the needle that jutted into Camdyn’s right forearm. This dragged her mentally back into the real world, and Camdyn blinked the lack of focus from her eyes and mind.  
“Hey, good morning,” said the Medical- Examiner- In- Training, widening his grin. “Knew you’d be just fine.”  
She stirred, careful not to jar the needle- pricked arm too greatly, and pulled herself upright with some struggle.  
“You’ve been asleep a long while, kid,” the Examiner informed her genially. “You missed the midday and evening meals. It’s probably pretty late by now, but I’m not really sure what time is.”  
Camdyn sighed and dropped back onto the mattress.  
“What’s in my arm?” she groaned, not necessarily trustful of a Medical- Examiner- In- Training who was not able to keep track of time.  
“Oh, that,” he remarked excitedly, stepping forward to point at it, “is a blend of extracted rye and whey proteins, combined with several lab-grown electrolytes and restorative complex- sucrose chains. It’s usually taken orally, actually, but I needed to get some into your system before I lost you to a coma. You were working hard out there, kid. You want me to take it down and give you a mug of it?”  
Camdyn began to harbor a slight distaste for the young Examiner’s overly- talkative manner, but nodded her consent. He was warm, anyways. And enthusiastic. She watched his back as he unhooked the pouch from its perch, brought it down onto a small counter nearby, then disconnected the tube. He ambled over, hands thick but nimble and gentle as he deftly slid the needle from her arm, looking intently up into her face as he did so. His eyes were a light golden green, contrasting his rather dark hair and scruff- shaded face, and his skin was of a darker complexity than most Camdyn had seen in the Republic. He must have come in from the Agricultural District. He tossed the tube and the needle and the tape onto the counter, to tend to later, and slit the pouch of liquid open over a black tin mug, letting it trickle into the modest vessel. He turned and handed the mug to Camdyn, who was surprised to find that it was, in fact, warm. Under his rather intense eye, she took a tentative sip and swallowed. A sweet and somewhat milky flavor filled her mouth and she smacked her lips as they stuck together under its sugary effects. The man smiled, inclining his head forward and raising his eyebrows at her in inquiry.  
“Mmm…” Camdyn affirmed, taking another sip and relishing it with all honestly.  
“Right?” the young man asked, enthusiastically. It was an odd thing to say, really, but Camdyn supposed that the Agricultural District citizens had a different manner of expressing themselves than Metropolis citizens had.  
“I think it is so fascinating,” he beamed, nodding at the cup that Camdyn sipped out of, “that our bodies let us know what they need and don’t by letting our brains relish the flavors of beneficial substances and relive the flavors of unneeded substances.” He picked up the empty pouch, peering through it with energetic interest, scanning it as though it held some sort of secret. “If I were to drink that stuff, I’d want to spit it out, you know. It’s not what I need. It’s not what I want. But then it can go and crave something that’s not what it needs at all. The body is just so complex and fascinating.”  
He turned and smiled at her warmly.  
“You got a name?” he queried genially.  
“Camdyn Layne Alethea,” she replied after swallowing her next mouthful.  
“I’m Alces Louis Fluminis,” he informed her, tipping his head. “Nice to meet you, Camdyn Layne.”  
Not really knowing what to say, she allowed herself a soft smile and continued to sip the fluid. The comfortable silence was suddenly interrupted by a sharp rapping on the door of the small portable. Alces rushed over to the door and shoved it open to reveal Gret.  
“C’mon, kid,” she growled, “it’s almost curfew.”  
Camdyn glanced over at Alces and twitched her hand gripping the cup. He nodded in reply, consenting that she take it along with her.  
“I’ll be along tomorrow, Camdyn,” he pledged, making very deliberate and almost disconcerting eye contact, “to check up on you. See if you’re alright. Get my mug back.”  
She nodded and slid off of the examining table, momentarily steadying herself before she followed Gret out into the dusky evening.  
“Is he always like that?” Camdyn asked her, once they were well away from the Medical Examiner’s Shack.  
“Mmm,” Gret grunted in acknowledgement and affirmation. “One of those weird Agrarians. They never have their heads on right.”  
Camdyn sighed. He seemed nice. A bit intense, but very warm and personable. She supposed one could easily get used to the acute staring in exchange for the congeniality. No matter, she thought to herself, it’s not as though anyone around here has their head on straight. As she walked alongside Gret, Camdyn sensed a tangible disdain emanating from the older girl. She could feel the platoon leader’s pride producing disgust for Camdyn, who she now considered weak and, subsequently worthless. Camdyn sipped at the sweet fluid in the mug and kept her eyes down as she walked, now steeping in remorse for having fainted and in frustration at the leader’s lack of understanding. How can she expect me to be able to keep up? Camdyn cried inwardly. I’m a Metropolis Citizen and I’ve only just gotten here. I haven’t had the conditioning they have! An exasperated sigh escaped her lips, which did not go unnoticed by Gret by any means. The two walked in silence to the barracks, where Camdyn sat on her bunk to finish the drink Alces had given her.  
Soon, the curfew horn sounded and Camdyn was left in darkness and silence, still clothed and wearing her boots, still sipping away at Alces’s brew, which she was savoring as slowly as she possibly could. As she sat, in the silence and stillness, she realized how desperately alone she truly was. She was isolated from anything she’d ever known. She was stripped of her value. Her worth. Even her usefulness. And yet, she was still so different, and it pained her. It was the first time she had been pained to be different. It was the first time she had felt the need to fit in. These platoons, she realized, don’t work unless each of them is one. Unless they are perfectly harmonious. With a sigh, Camdyn lay back down, tears of confusion and humiliation welling up in her eyes. She had no place here.  
Several weeks passed in this manner. Alces came to check on her every so often and occasionally summoned her to the Examiner’s Shack to give her extra vittles. Always warm. Always kind. Those were times that Camdyn truly enjoyed, in contrast with the torture of the rest of her day. Between wake and sleep was work, work, work. Building, repairing, running, lifting, and heaving from day to day. Marksmanship practice in which the rifles bruised her shoulders and the handguns pained her ears. Taser handling practice in which the training mechanism mildly shocked her for each missed shot. Mental conditioning in the Sensory Projection Center in which Camdyn fought clawed demon- spawn, one- on- twenty, with naught but a knife— they bloodied her and ripped her to shreds and filled her mind with horrible screeching, and just as her body believed it was dying, the neural regulator jerked her viciously into consciousness. Hand- to-hand combat training in which each member of Camdyn’s platoon aggressively bruised and battered Camdyn, whether she be the attacker or the defender. Wrestling, grapping, kicking, clawing, straining, and choking from session to session. Camdyn’s back developed a permanent downward bend. Her legs wobbled. Her head spun. From gloaming till dawn she lay in torment, struggling desperately to sleep despite her pain, struggling to calm herself, struggling to forget her family and her freedom.  
On the third day of the fourth week of Camdyn’s training, she lay in the blackness, nursing a well-sprained wrist which Alces had bound tightly for her, trying to empty her mind of each and every thought, for no matter which thought she summoned to her mind, she was filled with a morose hatred of self. She slowly realized that she was going to have to try much harder to fit in, for she was the weakest link of her platoon. She weakened the whole chain and brought them extra work because of their weakness. Suddenly burdened with dark determination, Camdyn drew a long draught from the mug and finished the liquid. I’ve got to do it. It simply must be done.  
She stood up and tiptoed carefully out down the row of bunks to the door. She knew that whatever Surveillance System was observing her knew her purposes and would not disturb her. With a soft grunt, Camdyn thrust the thick door open and stepped out into the night. She did not see the stars above her head, despite their vast preponderance. She did not admire the soft shadow behind her, cast by the glow of the moon. She did not relish the breeze, now cool and soft, as it caressed her and begged her to go back to bed. She merely marched up to the Medical Examiner’s Shack, now dark, stole in, and silently approached the counter. She grasped the razor from its place in a little cup, from which she had seen Alces pluck it several times.  
With deep breaths to steady herself, Camdyn Layne Alethea cut every precious auburn- chestnut hair from her head. Within minutes, she was staring into her reflection in the window. It could have been anyone’s. Dark, tired, and sagging beneath the eyes. Gaunt and lean in the neck and the collarbone. Pale head and skin. The wise question which had always waited just behind Camdyn Layne’s lips fell onto the floor and into the mass of warm, dark- red tangles and curls and waves around her feet, dark like a pool of blood in the dim light from the moon— lost and irreplaceable. 

CHAPTER ELEVEN  
From whence comes all things men know? From within or without do men’s rivers flow? Is it taught? Is it learned? Is’t poured in their minds? Or is’t built by each man as he seeks and he finds?  
The thin- faced nursery attendant shuffled along the outside of the swarming horde of five- year- olds in her charge. Glancing across the crowd, she made eye contact with her partner and inclined her head to the right, cuing him to move along the edge as well. They met at the far end of the room and stood together, staring indifferently down at the young children to whom they tended. Over half of the class consisted of unclaimed children— children of the State— and were in the charge of the nursemaids twenty-four hours a day. In order to maintain a certain lack of a relational aspect to the care of the young citizens, nursemaids were rotated weekly and kept on a number- to- number basis with their constituents. However, the nursemaids did develop an understanding of the children to whom they tended, as it was their business to keep them placated and indoctrinated, and it was often necessary to use tactics that were more personal to each individual babe. As the thin- faced nursery attendant stood and surveyed the crop, she noticed a shaven head that she did not recognize.  
“Who is that child?” she demanded, leaning over to her associate and pointing to the recently- shaven child who ambled about the room at a much slower pace than did her peers.  
The associate, a dark- eyed, thick- necked man who most did not expect to be a nursemaid, glanced down at the clipboard in his hands, and, after flipping several pages, he held it up for her to see.  
“New one,” he remarked gruffly. “Dead guardians. Doesn’t know her number, so she goes by ‘Jaxi’, oddly enough. Her name is actually Jaxon Jay.”  
The narrow- faced woman sighed exasperatedly.  
“That,” she hissed in a disgusted tone, “is what comes of not surrendering fetuses to the state upon conception. Our labs sustain and develop them so much more quickly and efficiently than does the human womb and our education system is far better able to reach them and instruct them if they are State Home Citizens.” She clucked sadly, glancing over with an expression of pity at little Jaxi Jay, who seemed dazed and confused as she meandered about the room, gazing intently at each of the children around her. The woman’s brow furrowed as she suddenly caught notice of the splash of pink just above the child’s hand.  
“What is that on her wrist?” she queried disdainfully of her burly associate.  
“Mmm.” He checked his notes again. “It’s of some sentimental value to her. Behavioral Maintenance Officials are holding private sessions with her to condition her to take it off of her own accord, as she actually becomes hysterical when anyone attempts to take it from her. Until then, they have conceded to tolerate its presence.”  
The woman sighed deeply, this time with more annoyance than pity.  
“Like I said,” she informed him, “it all comes of those barbarians giving birth and rearing their whelps.”  
He nodded, also filled with irritation, and turned to walk back around the edge of the mass of tiny bodies, delicately stepping around little fingers and toes, so as to avoid an outburst of tears and a trip to the Medical Examiner’s counter.  
Foolish, foolish, foolish.

CHAPTER TWELVE  
Man fears so greatly to love what he can, For loving and losing can undo a man. In danger are men who let themselves care, Of loss and of death must he always beware.  
Cadet Camdyn Layne Alethea, Citizen Number 112795, became a successful troopswomen in the Peace Corps of the Blessed Republic. Her body hardened, grown by a steady diet of whey protein in addition to the full rations of rye meal and even the juice of a blend of raw Agrarian greens, as well as the trying physical labor which the Corps demanded of her. If the Corps asked, Camdyn answered. If the Corps instructed, Camdyn obeyed. She hardened herself to the notion of family, understanding full well that she would never see anyone she loved ever again.  
But not all of her was lost.  
She never forgot what Kay Mendacium had said to her.  
Conflict, Miss Alethea, is a fatal disease.  
When conflict is introduced to a society, the only way to stop its spread is to kill that body by which the virus survives.  
To kill that body.  
She did not understand why it was so prominent, a brand on her mind that blazed red, always fresh with the pain of the original burn. Any time she allowed her mind to question— even for a minute— even for a moment— this was the thought to which she invariably gravitated. It made little to no sense, yet it was there, always gnawing at her. Always giving her the most horrifying chills and shivers.  
Nonetheless, she choked down what she could. She accepted the Republic’s way of life, she accepted the orders she was given, she accepted the rain and the grayness and the blandness and the bleakness and the dampness and each and every other thing that she desperately wanted to hate and to change, however deep the desire to question them was. She barely spoke, whether to her fellow troopsman, to her commanders, or to any of the Medical Examiners. Alces had shipped out for additional training a mere four weeks after Camdyn’s meeting him, and she often was grateful that he had not stayed and tried to befriend her. Several months of training passed and she was assigned to a guard position in the Fourth Agricultural District, in which the citizens grew rye and cotton. She stood on turrets in fields for two five- hour shifts a day, in between which she vigorously exercised and practiced marksmanship, for the Guardsmen of the Agrarians wielded heavier firearms than those in the Metropolis, accounting for the incredibly long distances that often separated a guardsman from his constituents. She numbed her mind by conditioning her body. Five, six, seven, eight mile runs. Hauling stones on her back from one end of a field to another and back again. Larger and larger stones as the seasons passed. Larger and larger fields as she continued. She ignored the warm Agrarians. She reviled their kind speech and large families. She hardened her mind and her heart against all those she saw, avoiding their eyes and staring straight ahead, giving only succinct replies and making them as seldom as she possibly could. It was not the life she wanted, but it was the life she had been allotted and so she learned not to hate it. In fact, as she worked, she grew to hate her father. She grew to hate his having taught her. She grew to despise the knowledge the filled her and caused her to question. She grew to yearn for ignorance and peace from the myriad of thoughts that swarmed about in her mind like a thousand gears all turning, a thousand pistons all pumping, a thousand workers all swarming this way and that. She suddenly wished that she could believe lies. Lies, lies, lies were all she wanted any longer.  
On the sixth day of the fifth month of Camdyn’s third year of service, Camdyn stood in the eighth sector, twelfth quadrant, first field of rye, on her guardsman’s turret, looking out over all the workers. She had not had an incident so far in this harvest season, which she understood to be the busiest of the seasons, not only for the Agricultural District Citizens, but also for the Guardsmen of the Agrarians. The Corpsmen dealt with pilfering, gleaning, hoarding, and other various larcenies during the whole season, and their superiors demanded that these felonies be kept to a bare minimum of zero. Hence, the Guardsmen resorted to intimidation. Camdyn once saw a Guard use his rifle’s butt to knock a man unconscious for having a handful of grains in his pockets.  
The people of the Agricultural Districts, being slightly more free, were subject to much harsher punishments for any crimes they committed. The Republic expected them to heed national laws, despite their lack of cultural standards to fit those laws. Camdyn had not approved of the overly- violent and harsh punishment in the slightest, but soon realized that it was the only way to save him and any of those Agrarians witnessing it from further punishment in the future. Camdyn stood in her tower, lightly considering this when a quick movement below caught her eye. She jerked forward, straining to catch a second glimpse of whatever- it- was and found herself unable to locate it. Suddenly, a scream ripped through the air, and in a flash, Camdyn had a white- knuckled grip on her rifle. She stared down the barrel, squinting, sweeping, scanning for the sound.  
There.  
A flit of gray between bales of rye.  
One after the other.  
Dashing. Running. Howling.  
One stained red, a flow of crimson easily visible as he zipped about through the crops.  
The other pursuing— garments clean.  
The stained one, tripping and tumbling, ends up on the ground.  
A flash of reflected light as a sun- darkened hand raised a knife high above the head of the pursuing man.  
A concussive rifle shot.  
A dead Agrarian.  
Camdyn slung her rifle over her shoulder by its strap, pulled the knife from her boot, and slid backwards down the turret ladder. She set off at a jog in the direction of the fresh corpse and the injured citizen, and when she arrived, she discovered that the older, knife- wielding man, who she had shot, had toppled off of his feet and onto the slightly younger man he had been chasing. The man he had already stabbed once. She jogged over to the corpse, under which the injured man still lay quivering, and shoved it away with one foot.  
“You alright?” Camdyn asked shortly of the hyperventilating Agrarian.  
He nodded, shivering and whimpering.  
“Quit the sniveling,” she barked at him, bending down to look him over. “It’s just a flesh wound. You’ll be fine.” She glanced over at the corpse and took the knife from its cold, clutching hand, jamming it into her belt before standing up.  
“Look,” she remarked to the wounded Agrarian, “you were just running for your life. You can get up and walk to the Medical Examiner’s Shack two fields over. But here—“ she slashed a long strip of fabric from the corpse’s pants—“get up.”  
She bound his midsection tightly with the strip, knotting it thoroughly but without tenderness, causing the man to wince and yelp. She ignored his pain and cinched it all the tighter. When she was through, she dropped her hands and turned to look into his face.  
“So, before you head over, tell me what the story is,” she demanded, swinging her rifle around from her shoulder to point the bayonet at him menacingly.  
His eyes widened and he took a small step back.  
“He is my older brother. He was trying to murder me because my father has determined me more worthy than he to receive his position. We have not heard from my eldest brother in many moons, so he has ordained me his benefactor, and this—“ he gestured slightly “—my second brother… was angry because of it.  
He still looked terrified, as though he did not expect her to believe him.  
“Alright,” she growled, “get to the Med Shack. I’ll radio it in and they’ll be expecting you.”  
His jaw dropped open in confusion and surprise, but he just stood there, deaf and dumb from the shock. Camdyn rolled her eyes and sighed deeply.  
“Well, get!” she barked, pushing the bayonet further his direction, and motivating him forward and away.  
As she watched him strain along, she glanced down at the man who lay dead, in a pool of blood, by her own hand. She searched herself for several moments and was astonished to discover an extreme lack of astonishment. She had never killed anything larger than a coal- mill beetle. She had never even delivered a blow to a fellow man. She could not afford to get into a brawl with someone larger than herself, be beaten, and bring disrespect onto the Peace Corps, and so had merely been harsh in her assigned punishments: confiscated rations, added chores, longer shifts. The sort of thing that Camdyn did not necessarily need to carry out herself, once she had earned the authority to punish at all.  
With an exasperated sigh, she pulled her radio from its place on her belt beside her Compact Personal Timeline Module and set it to the Medical Examiner’s frequency. She put it before her lips and in the distinct, learned lilt of the Corpsmen, barked out the information in a hurried, yet well- enunciated stream:  
Attention Medical Examiner Facility Number One- Two- One- Oh- Five, this is Corpsman Number One- One- Two- Seven- Nine- Five. There is an injured citizen on his way to your station in need of medical attention, most likely some heavy suturing. He has received a blade wound from what appears to be a knife hewn from stone which may have left debris inside the wound itself. In addition, I’m going to need two of your trainees to report to the first field of the twelfth quadrant in the eight sector to retrieve and dispose of a corpse, shot down as a preventative measure. Do you read me?  
After a slight pause and several vague crackles and sputters from her communicator, the reply came:  
We read you, Corpsman. The team will be on its way to you shortly.  
She nodded.  
Copy. Over and out.  
She hooked the radio back onto her belt and gave one last quick glance at the dead man, a final attempt to elicit some sort of remorse or regret or shock in herself, yet she felt nothing. Not a single pang nor pain. Which was somehow worse to feel. But she merely sighed again, slung her rifle over her shoulder, and marched determinedly back to her turret, to continue her guard shift. She reached the turret and ascended the ladder carefully, sure to lock the trapdoor below her, and stood, still surveying the silence of the windswept rye fields. Camdyn may have once thought them to be beautiful, on a day that she had believed that such a quality existed. But it had been a long while since Camdyn had beheld anything and thought that it was beautiful. It had been long enough that Camdyn had to strain to even remember what she had once thought was beautiful, although she found it hard to place why. In all honesty, it had not truly been all that long, in terms of her Timeline. But she had updated so many times and so often, in order to fit in, it was as though she could feel all of the additional timelines that she had avoided living. It was curious to think that the strain was actually there. By living a mistake and updating your past self a notification to aid that self in avoiding the mistake, one deleted the timeline with the mistake in it entirely. However, Camdyn almost felt that she was actually living those extra deleted timelines. She felt drained. Tired. As though she was cramming extra hours into every day that she lived. This made everything she did cost more than the usual effort, but the lack of mistakes was, to Camdyn, worth it. She reverted to living on functionality and rationality and anything in between, because she knew that anything else would break her. She learned to accept that she was no longer her own. She learned to reject and choke out any kind of differentiating factor of hers that reared its ugly head. Her life consisted of her schedule. She woke. She watched. She worked. She slumbered.  
The burly female soldier from Camdyn’s training platoon, Nat, had been transferred to the same Agricultural District upon graduation from the training program. The two girls had opted to bunk together and they trained together often. Nat challenged Camdyn in combat and, in turn, Camdyn— who had become one of the swiftest troopswomen in her training division— challenged Nat in foot- races. Partners of functionality. However, Nat had noticed Camdyn’s full repentance of her former ways, and it almost concerned the gruff Corpswoman. As Camdyn walked into the barracks from the end of the shift in which she had killed the aggressive Agricultural District citizen, Nat noticed a smear of blood on her small associate’s trousers, which the latter had missed entirely.  
“Cam. ‘Ey. What is that?” the muscular girl gestured vaguely to Camdyn’s thigh with the whetstone that she was using to sharpen her knife.  
“Hm?” Camdyn looked down at her uniform, searching for what had drawn Nat’s eye, and, upon locating it, looked up and shrugged. “Blood,” was all she offered, before beginning to pull off her uniform coat.  
“Yeah, I know,” Nat growled, annoyed. “But from where?”  
Camdyn did not reply for several moments, but when she did, her voice was low. More serious that Nat had ever heard.  
“Killed an Ag’ today.”  
Nat’s jaw dropped. The gruff Guardswoman was not often fazed nor surprised, but this—this— was something new.  
“Well?” she demanded, realizing that Camdyn did not plan to expound on her statement. “What happened?”  
Camdyn began to unlace her boots and replied without bothering to look up at Nat.  
“One was after his brother with a knife. Shot him before he could finish the job.”  
“How far out were you?” Nat probed, knowing that Camdyn was a fair marksman.  
“Maybe a bit more than 400 yards,” Camdyn responded flatly.  
Nat was astonished at the kid’s lack of words. Lack of feeling.  
“Well…” she continued, searching for words as she set aside her knife and whetstone, “how did it feel?”  
It was an honest question by an innocently curious party, but it earned a such a cold look of malevolence that Nat winced slightly and leaned back in retreat.  
“It didn’t,” was all Camdyn growled before tossing her cap onto the bed- post and laying down on her bunk.  
Nat sat, staring in shock. This scrawny, auburn- headed kid had once gotten moist eyes during a taser training session in which the instructor had detailed an accident by a Corpsman which had killed a small child. But now she can kill a man without any sort of remorse or even acknowledgement? Nat grabbed her knife with determination and plunged it into the mattress just beside Camdyn.  
“What is with you?” she demanded, standing over Camdyn and still gripping the hilt of her blade.  
“What are you talking about?” Camdyn snapped, shoving the older girl backwards. “Get away from me!”  
Nat stood up, jerking her knife out of the mattress and pointing it at Camdyn, not threateningly, but with a good deal of seriousness.  
“I’m talking about,” she growled, giving the blade a small shake with each syllable, to be sure Camdyn got everything, “that you, of all people in this accursed universe, are suddenly a cold- blooded killer and it makes no difference to you whether anyone lives or dies. You used to care so much, Camdyn! It almost gave us hope! Do you realize that?” Nat was yelling full- force now. “Your obsessing over your little sister all the time, your mentioning personal rights offhandedly whenever you felt that yours were threatened, all of that stupid gibberish you talked about Locke and Paine and Rousseau and Voltaire— all of it— began to get to that platoon in those first three weeks. Then you went and shaved your head and blended in. And for what?! For this?!” With this, Nat snatched Camdyn’s uniform jacket by its collar off of the bed- post where it limply hung, waving it in Camdyn’s unmoved face, who then shoved it away and rolled over, turning her back on Nat.  
Nat couldn’t believe it. Nothing. No response. No reaction. No yelling. No crying. No laughing. Nothing. This kid was gone. She tossed the jacket across the bed at Camdyn’s feet and sat back down on hers, still facing the younger girl’s back.  
“I can’t believe it,” she murmured, stunned by the silence. “You really don’t care.”  
At this, Camdyn rolled off of the bed to stand just in front of Nat, now gripping her own well- tended blade and flicking it back and forth between Nat’s eyes as she growled.  
“Do you want to know why, Nat? Do you want to know? It’s because if you care, then you are vulnerable. If you care, you can be broken. Every concern, every single thing you love, every single thing you value is just another way for them to breach your walls. Just another way for them to reach out and control you. To care, Nat, is to let them break you.”  
Nat had flattened herself against the wall behind her bed in an attempt to keep her eyes as far from the tip of Camdyn’s blade as she could, and now she looked up into the young girl’s pale gray eyes, filled with emptiness. Void of warmth. Camdyn dropped her knife hand from Nat’s face and spun on her heel to return to her bunk, and Nat straightened up, pulling her feet under her as she leaned over to put the lights out.  
“If that’s really what you think,” she said to the blackness that had swallowed Camdyn, “then you’re the least human of us all.”  
There was no reply.  
Merely blackness and the sound of Camdyn pulling her woolen blanket up to her neck.  
Blackness and silence drained any once of solitude that Nat had left, and she rolled over onto her side, disturbed by the change she had discovered in her junior comrade.  
So young and yet so hardened.  
However, just before the blackness enveloped the two girls in sleep, Camdyn’s Compact Personal Timeline Module gave a ring, with a summons from Commander Argyle to the Guardsman’s Station in the village for a behavioral examination.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN  
The mind may wonder once or twice, If it lives to endure vice, For nothing more unnatural seems, Than shattered hopes or shattered dreams.  
Alces Louis Fluminis breathed freely again. No longer did the air taste of ash- wastes and factory smoke. No longer did the sun strain so desperately to cause its pale light to leak through the think clouds. No longer did his mouth anticipate the bitter flavor of stale rye. He was home. He could breathe freely again. He anticipated being reunited with his parents and two younger brothers, not having communicated with them in the four years that he’d been away for training, yet he knew that they would be proud of him. Their eldest son, a Medical Examiner. He had been the first in his family to score decently on the Republic’s standardized Career Aptitude Test, by which nearly every Agrarian- born citizen discovered that he was cut out to remain an Agrarian, and had been approved for the Medical Training Program. He had been sent to the Peace Corps Training Facility in order to learn and practice, for in said location did many and most injuries slip through the fine net of Timeline Editation. He had learned well, worked hard, and passed his exams with exemplary scores, earning him the right to go home to practice his newly learned career. The Training Facility Officials had informed him that his family would be updated as to his success and return, and now that he stood on the replenished earth of that home, his chest loosened and he was able to relax.  
He felt strange as he walked through the streets of the village that he knew so well. Nothing had changed. His people, darkened in skin and hair by the work they performed seemed of the exact shade that it had been when he had left. The cracked, whitewashed sign that hung over the mercantile still hung crookedly, lacking a bolt in its upper right- hand corner, swinging and creaking in the stale wind. The third step up to the commons- building still had a great gaping hole in it, where a loose bull had put its hind foot through as the Agrarians had cornered it to put a rope through the ring in its velvety nose. The whole left by Janie Kay Anderson had knocked a brick loose from the wall of the village’s well was still unfilled. The warped, splintering board that covered the second to the bottom pane of glass in the enormous window at the Education Center’s front still rattled and shook when the wind kicked up. The poisoned river, flowing as clearly and as strongly as ever, still swished past the village, paying it no heed. The imposing, yet necessary presence of the water treatment plant still darkened the horizon, pumping clean steam into the air as it filtered the river to quench the thirst of the dry and dehydrated field workers. The white brick Guardsmen’s Station still gleamed and glittered in the sunlight, far better maintained than any other building in the town. His village. His home, despite its controlling overseers.  
As he walked down the dirt road, formed by the thousands upon thousands of treks by cargo trucks and transport vehicles up and down the way, he noticed that few of his fellow Agrarians took notice of him. Of course, he had not necessarily expected a parade nor fanfare to hail his return, but he had hoped for a warm welcome. Maybe a smile and an extended hand from any of his neighbors. But most of them pretended that they could not see him. Those who did acknowledge his existence, even for the tiniest fraction of a moment, gave him a cold look of some emotion that he could not quite place. Slowly, his eyebrows knit together and his face darkened like the shadows that moved beneath the acid lake not eighty field- lengths from the village. He understood vaguely that something had changed. A change not visible, but in the underlying consciousness of the village. Something had changed at the very core.  
He drudged through the village, passed through it entirely, and ambled along the road towards the familial barracks, in disconcerted thought. It took him half an hour to reach the barracks, ten full minutes to convince the gate- guard that he was no impostor, and another five to reach his own cubicle. Drawing in a breath to steady himself, he paused at the door, listening for a short moment before he knocked, but he could hear nothing. Suddenly, his Compact Personal Timeline Module gave a tiny ring, and he slid it from his belt.  
BRACE YOURSELF  
Now sweating, he jammed it back onto his belt and slammed his fist on the door five times, listening to the sound echo down the concrete hallway of the barracks.  
Nothing.  
He pounded again.  
Still nothing.  
Heart racing and palms sweating in confusion and worry, he turned to leave—  
—and was stopped by the click of a bolt sliding from its catch.  
His mother’s visage, once so warm and young, her unruly curls untended, filled the tiny crack between the door and the wall. Her eyes were swollen and red, and her face was streaked with tears. Choking back tiny, hiccupping gasps, she blinked and squinted at him. They stared at one another for five seconds, each of which exponentially increased the pain and worry that had settled into Alces’s heart upon beholding his mother in this state. So aged. So tired. So worn. Alces summoned his strength and drew a deep breath once again.  
“…Ma?”  
Her face clouded with confusion, then light flooded it as she recognized it.  
“Alces!” she flung the door fully open and leapt out, putting her arms around his neck, sobbing and wailing.  
He was stunned and confused, but he embraced his mother nonetheless and peered over her head into the Fluminis cubicle. His father had just stood up from his seat on the bench, spectacles in one hand and a study on fertilizer blends in the other, mouth agape and eyes wide. Beside father’s place on the bench sat Alces’s youngest brother, Jensen, looking pained and confused.  
“…Alces?” inquired Alces’s father slowly.  
“Yeah, dad,” Alces replied carefully, still unsure of anything. “What’s going on? Where’s Marco?”  
His father, Talbot Fluminis, seemed not to hear Alces’s questions.  
“We thought you were supposed to be home two years ago, Alces,” he said slowly, sorrowfully. “The medical program is a two year course.”  
Alces furrowed his brow, stepped back from his mother, and swallowed.  
“They said they would notify you… I went on to the additional surgeon’s training so that I could be sure that they’d let me work here in the village.”  
A sob escaped Mrs. Fluminis, and she turned to look at her husband.  
“If we had only known!” she whispered, obviously tormented.  
Alces grew impatient with every passing second, and he looked from one parent to the other with a demanding expression on his dark features.  
“Someone is going to have to tell me whatever it is eventually,” he prompted finally, eyeing his father, who folded up his glasses and put them in his shirt- pocket.  
“Listen, Alces,” the older man began, sitting down and motioning for his wife and son to join him. “We thought that we had lost you, son. We couldn’t find any reasonable explanation for your extra time away, and we thought you must have died somehow. In that light, your mother and I knew that I was going to be forcibly retired from my management position in my old age, and that position would pass to my eldest son, but… Marco, despite his age, is not who I wanted having that job. I elected to pass it to Jensen.”  
Jensen looked over at his older brother, and Alces caught notice that his brother was sitting ramrod straight, like a length of galvanized pipe and that he looked truly strained. Talbot Fluminis glanced at both of his sons, then drew a breath and continued.  
“Marco was hurt and angered by this decision and he relentlessly pursued Jensen, demanding that Jensen renounce the inheritance and return it to him. However, Jensen did as I asked and refused to renounce it. After a few of the longest and most tormenting months of Marco’s life, he made an attempt on Jensen’s life and was shot down by a Corpswoman.”  
Alces’s mouth dropped open and his throat tightened as he looked from parent to parent to brother. His mother, still struggling for composure, put her hand on her husband’s knee and looked over into the eyes of her beloved eldest son.  
“If only we had known,” she whispered morosely, “that you were coming home, Alces, then your father would not have had to create this conflict between your brothers and Marco would still be—“ she was cut off sharply by her own sobbing, and she buried her face in her husband’s shoulder.  
Alces leaned forward and put his head in his hands. His face became hot and his vision went blurry as his eyes filled with tears. How could Marco have been so polluted to think that killing Jensen— his own brother— would earn him a reward? Inhaling sharply, he looked up.  
“I’m going to the Guardsman’s Station.”  
He stood from the bench, stepped onto the seat, over the back, and strode out the door, leaving his parents bewildered and bereaved.  
As he left the barracks he began to jog, merely for the sake of making it there in time to make it back before the fourth hour of darkness— curfew, of course— and his breath became heavy and strained in his chest. He was not panting for fatigue, however, but because he was so pained and ashamed. If I had just come home, he cried within his mind, if I had just forgotten about it. He would be here.  
It took a mere fifteen minutes to reach the Guardsman’s Station, as opposed to the twenty- five that it had taken him to reach the barracks from it at a walk. He marched up the steps, drenched in sweat and filled with sorrow. Glancing in the windows as he passed them, Alces saw that there were several Guardsmen and women moving about within. Steadying himself, he pushed the door open and stepped in. With as even a voice as he could muster, he addressed the room, which housed various clusters of sitting at Guardsmen at tables and at counters and standing in groups, Guardsmen drinking and Guardsmen playing cards, Guardsmen drawing on maps and charts and schedules, all of whom had stopped their various activities to turn and look at the door that should not have opened.  
“I would like,” Alces delineated levelly, “to address the Commander of the Station.”  
A cold- eyed man, bent over a table of charts and maps, straightened and glared at Alces.  
“Speaking,” he replied, leery of an Agrarian with the audacity to march into his Station in such a way.  
“Sir,” Alces continued, “I was under the impression that this Station was responsible for the communication of dispatches from other stations and bases to the locals here, should it concern them.”  
The Commander, a man called Commander Argyle, furrowed his brow and nodded slightly.  
“Five days ago,” Alces informed him “this station received a dispatch from the Training Center in the ash- wastes, concerning the return of a newly- trained Medical Examiner to his home in order for him to begin practicing here as his first duty station.”  
Commander Argyle nodded once again, this time in affirmation.  
“And, as I understand it,” Alces continued, “that dispatch was not delivered to the family of the Medical Examiner. Am I not correct?”  
Each eye in the room was, at this point, passing back and forth between their steely commander and this brash Agrarian who they all deemed lucky not to have been thrown out and beaten just for appearing at the Guardsmen’s Station.  
The Commander stepped around the table and slowly approached the young Medical Examiner, stopping just shy of kissing distance. This unnerved Alces slightly, but he knew he was not in any position to take a step back.  
“I was aware,” hissed the Commander, his voice like a dull knife scraping against stone, his tobacco- scented breath beating against Alces’s face with every syllable, “that it was the Guardsmen of the Corps, and not the Citizens of the Agricultural District, that regulated behavior in this village.”  
Alces choked down the snarl that was welling up in him and swallowed, replacing his rising anger with a front of false respect.  
“I do not mean to accuse you of incompetency, Commander. I would merely like to inform you that your choice to leave certain dispatches undelivered has caused a murderous strife to rise up in my family, and now one of my brothers is dead. I simply would like to make you aware of the natural consequences of your actions. Besides, sir, how long have Guardsmen had the power— the jurisdiction— to gun a man down on the fly?”  
Commander Argyle chuckled coolly.  
“Corpsman Alethea, report!”  
The cry was so sudden, that it confused and startled Alces, who had to blink and shake his head to clear it from his ears. A shuffling in the back of the Guardsman’s Station met Alces’s ears as Commander Argyle turned to greet a Corpsman. When he recognized the short stature and the pale eyes, he went slightly limp with confusion and concern.  
“Camdyn…?” he breathed.  
“Hello, Medical Examiner Fluminis,” she acknowledged coldly. “It has been a great deal of time.”  
Alces nodded, looking her over, when he noticed a shining pin on the pocket of her uniform, which, although she had grown a good deal, was still far too large and hung off of her slender frame inconveniently. He looked up into her eyes questioningly.  
“Promoted so soon?” he remarked with interest. Truly, a cadet usually had to serve for four years or more before his first change of rank.  
She looked up at him, a glimmer of pride flickering behind her gray eyes.  
“Yes,” she intoned slowly. “Promoted for outstanding service.”  
Alces’s mouth went dry as he began to develop a slight hunch as to what that service may be.  
“Your marksmanship has improved, then?” he tested carefully.  
She smirked.  
“Quite. Nailed an assailant in the rye fields earlier this week. One shot. One kill. And one badge.”  
Camdyn could not understand why the young Medical Examiner’s eyes began to become so moist and red. She leaned forward, curious, momentarily letting her diminutive age show in the concern that spread across her face.  
“Camdyn Layne Alethea,” he croaked, strained, “that man had a family and a life. What right had you to end him?”  
Camdyn withdrew from herself, realizing that she had shown a ray of compassion, and looked him dead in the eyes. Slowly, she raised her hand up from her side and pointed at the Corpsman’s Crest that adorned her right breast pocket, before turning on her heel to march back to her place at a table in the back. Alces clenched his fists and his jaw, turning his head aside and down to hide his internal struggle from the Commander who still stood before him.  
“Is there anything else you require, Agrarian?” he sneered, pleased with himself and with the performance of his young Corpsman.  
Alces glowered at him and declined, also turning and striding away into the night.  
Camdyn sat down at the table where she had been playing cards with several of her comrades. They each grinned and congratulated her again, pushing a bottle of rye- stalk liquor towards her, which she took and drew from. However, the chatting and laughing did not last long, as Commander Argyle approached the table, and each of the troops jumped up to stand at attention.  
“Guardsman Second- Class Alethea,” he growled, not unhappily, allowing Camdyn to relish the sound of her new rank, “I must speak with you.”  
She glanced at her comrades and stepped forward, following him as he turned and led her away, to a small room off of the side of the main one. He sat down at the little desk that inhabited the room and took up almost all of it. Camdyn stood, until she was invited to sit at the chair, which, although was designed to be across from the desk, was nearly on top of it as the desk filled the whole of the tiny room.  
“Guardsman,” began Commander Argyle, adjusting his position in the seat to a more comfortable one, “you are aware that I take great pride in your performance.”  
“Yes, Commander,” she replied evenly.  
“However,” he continued, knowing that the word would unnerve her greatly, “I cannot risk you being a source of great strife between the Guardsmen and the Agrarians of this District. I have decided to send you to your next duty station.”  
Here he paused, wondering if he ought to put it lightly, but shook it off and delivered his next sentence emphatically.  
“I’m sending you to the Metropolis.”  
Camdyn stood up from her chair, almost indignant.  
“Commander—“  
“I am sorry, Guardsman,” he interrupted, “but there is no other way around this. I cannot have you risking the delicate balance of this system.”  
She sat back down, her jaw jutting out at the injustice of it all. However, she nodded slightly and accepted.  
“I understand, Commander,” she forced out with some difficulty.  
He gave her a glance which almost resembled pity or compassion, but brushed it aside immediately.  
“Good. I’m glad. You’ll pack up and ship out in the morning. Report here at dawn. Dismissed!”  
Camdyn stood and strode out of the room, frustrated beyond any level she had ever experienced. She had devoted herself to the performance of a task, had performed it well, and was essentially being punished for it. No matter how she had tried not to care about the world around her, she had just awoken to realize that she had been clinging to her position as desperately as she had once clung to her family. She slammed the door of the Guardsman’s Station behind her as she marched defiantly back to the barracks. A short ringing sound came from her belt, and, despite her fury, she snatched up her Compact Personal Timeline Module and gave it a quick glance.  
CONFLICT IS A FATAL DISEASE  
Camdyn furrowed her brow and clicked the module shut. A bit too cryptic for her to be bothered with. She had to go and pack her equipment.  
Nat could tell that something was wrong with Camdyn when she walked in the door of their barracks- cubicle. Her mouth was drawn and her eyes expressed a deeper darkness of thought than their pale shade usually did. Her arm swung faster than usual against the door, which slammed harder into its frame that usual. Camdyn strode over to her bunk and began to rather violently fold her various uniform pieces and stack them inside her black, standard- issue footlocker. After watching Camdyn punish her clothing for several minutes, Nat ventured to ask:  
“What are you doing, Cam?”  
Camdyn made no answer and merely continued to roughly fold her personal affects and slam them firmly into the hardy, neoplasticine trunk. Nat sighed slightly, but made another attempt.  
“You okay, Cam? What’s going on?”  
Camdyn stood up and turned to face her muscular comrade.  
“They’re shipping me to the Metropolis for gunning down that Agrarian.”  
Her voice was so strained and forced that Nat was slightly taken aback.  
“The Metropolis?” she asked Camdyn, making sure she had heard right.  
“The Metropolis,” Camdyn affirmed, spitting out the five syllables as though they were a curse or a disease. “I’m going to be standing in a dank, smoking factory keeping one worker off of another with a taser or a puny handgun for the rest of my career.”  
She slammed the trunk shut and kicked it under her bunk, then tugged off her uniform, hung it on her bed- post for the morning, swung her legs up into bed, and lay on her back, staring at the concrete ceiling of the cubicle.  
“Nat,” she asked, just before the older girl turned off the light, “what do you suppose is the point of us all?”  
Nat grinned. Cam was back to her old stupid questions. Glad to see her junior comrade displaying some inquisitory thought, so she humored the question and graced it with a response.  
“I suppose we haven’t really got one, Cam. Not unless we choose one.”  
“Like serving the Republic…”  
Nat’s mouth twisted into an expression of existential confusion.  
“I suppose, Cam. I suppose.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN  
Never a more gray, nor a more cold, nor a more damp day ever was than the day that Guardsman Second- Class Camdyn Layne Alethea ascended the steps of the creaking, rust- encrusted bus and settled down beside her trunk on a seat close to the back with the least- shredded upholstery. She looked around the hollow inside of the enormous vehicle, and discovered herself to be the sole passenger in the many rows, lined up neatly one behind the other on either side, a strong reminder of the singularity of her situation. In her desperate and ardent attempt to conform, to blend in, to shed herself, she had only managed to isolate and mark herself as an individual. However, she did not consider this a reason with enough gravity to merit the chartering of an entire bus for the transport of a single soldier. She had thought that there must be a convenient cargo truck shipping out on this particular morning on which she would hitch a ride. But there had not been. Instead, as she had marched up to the Guardsman’s Station, she had found the shabby, gray bus waiting for her, manned by an equally shabby and gray driver. Commander Argyle had returned her salute with his own rather formal congé, and had turned to step back into the Station without another word. Camdyn was grieved to leave a place in which she had earned such respect, and she wondered if there was something else involved in her leaving— especially in her leaving so suddenly and on a bus all to herself.  
The rain pitter- patted against the clouded window and flowed in droplets across its marred surface in a pattern of swirls and streaks. The fattest droplets gently reflected the dull light of the sun behind the clouds, which glinted and flashed little sparks of light all around Camdyn. Occasionally, even a little rainbow flashed across Camdyn’s vision as she watched out the window. Long ago, the Agrarians had planted tiny trees at intervals along the road leading out of the Fourth Agricultural District, as a project to purify the air and help begin to purify all the water in the natural cycle. In the summer seasons, these trees were slightly taller than a grown man and sported dark green leaves that rustled pleasantly in the wind, filling the chilling silence of the ash- wastes with a sound that seemed fall naturally on the human ear. Now, however, these trees were barren and white, jutting sharply upward into the gray landscape which met the gray horizon with a seamless and continuous line. Camdyn watched as they went past and saw them, thinking of the bones that jutted into the grayness of The Perfection that the Republic had created. That death was the greatest weakness of man and that he cannot be perfect if he is temporal. If he is finite. If he is ephemeral. The white bones that upset the quiet gray. The white bones that created the chink in the armor of the Perfection.  
Camdyn stared out, almost glowering at the ash- wastes that the bus had now entered, scraping deep ruts in the glistening, gray sludge which made up the road. The cinereal scene served only to agitate Camdyn further, and she squirmed in her seat, trying to find a comfortable position. As she turned, something in the seat across from her and three rows back caught her eye. She whirled round fully, searching, but saw nothing. Furrowing her brow, she returned to sit and glare at the back of the seat in front of her. Unable to shake the feeling that something was amiss, she straightened up to look over the seat- back, and caught a glimpse of the black back of a head in the seat just four rows ahead of her just as the bus went over a rather large bump and upset her vision. When she looked back, the head was gone. She began to pant and her hands shook nervously as she stood up to check on the bus driver. As shabby and unaware as ever. Head spinning, she sat back down in her seat and crowded herself against the trunk, not daring to look around or breathe a word.  
“Hello, Camdyn.”  
The child soldier cringed and turned away from the voice— an unnaturally low tone that resonated strongly in her chest with each syllable.  
“It’s been quite a while, has it not?”  
She shuddered. This simply had to be Sensory Projection. But who? How? From where? Although she mentally acknowledged the presence of the dark figure, she did not turn to face it, nor did she address it.  
“Camdyn, darling,” the voice purred softly, “why so standoffish?”  
“I’m not,” she protested, turning to look at the figure, who now sat directly across the aisle from her.  
From somewhere deep in the blackness of the figure’s face, an even blacker smile formed. A wide grin which curved far across the head of the figure that Camdyn knew so well.  
“It is good to see your waking face,” the figure intoned, almost warmly, as though it was greeting an old friend.  
Camdyn looked at it dead on, just between where its eyes ought to be. She found it difficult to concentrate on a being without eyes to look into, but she managed anyhow.  
“I cannot return the sentiment,” she replied formally, nodding her head in a slight gesture of apology. She kept her voice low, trying not to let the driver of the bus hear her speaking.  
The black figure chuckled.  
“I would be concerned for your mental health if you did, Camdyn. If you liked me all of a sudden, they what would be the point of me any longer? No, I am glad that you are not glad, young one.”  
She shifted in her seat so as to better face the inky silhouette.  
“So…” she began, not quite sure where to go with the conversation. “You’re here for a reason, I suppose?”  
The figure’s smile faded and it nodded slightly.  
“I am,” it affirmed “but, I’d rather not bring it up just yet. First I’d like to ask you something. What made you question your world last night?”  
Camdyn tilted her head, unsure of what the figure meant by its question.  
“Ah,” the figure declared after several moments of confused silence. “You don’t know what I mean! I am referring of course, to your short discourse with your comrade, Guardsman Natalia H. Quentreid, last night before you went to sleep. It’s been eating at you, Camdyn. I can tell.”  
Camdyn realized that it had truly been eating at her. She had once been so used to questions eating at her that this time, nothing seemed to be amiss. With a sigh, she leaned forward and answered the figure with a certain warmth and familiarity that surprised even herself.  
“Listen… I don’t know what’s come over me, really. I’ve spent three years at that duty station, bettering myself. Becoming a better soldier and whatnot. I knew that caring about something would lead to my being broken by my superiors. I knew in my mind so well that to care is to allow yourself to be destroyed or corrupted or even killed. So I discarded from my mind anything that I had ever cared about. I pushed it all away, forsaking it in the ash- wastes of the Training Center. I thought I had purged myself, honestly. But, last night, when Commander Argyle informed me of my change of station, I realized that I did care. My forgoing of all those things that I had once cared about left a vacuum within me. When I learned that I was to be removed from the position of respect that I had earned, something within me shattered, and I now understand it to be that I cared about my job. I have as desperately adhered to success as I once clung to the neck of my parents. And it begs the question, Mister Figure, whether or not people were somehow designed for something. They simply cannot fail to care. To love. To cling to. It is not a possibly for us. We simply must, because it is in our nature. We have no choice.”  
The figure sat silently for a while, facing Camdyn. She felt, although she could not tell, that it was looking at her quite intently, as though it was studying her. This idea unnerved her greatly, and she squirmed in her seat as she waited for its reply. At long last, it spoke:  
“Camdyn Layne Alethea, there has never been a greater threat to this nation that the one you now pose. Even after extensive and rigorous Behavior Maintenance, you are still able to think and reason clearly. You are still able to feel. To know. To realize. Do you understand the position in which you have put this nation’s government?”  
This made no sense to Camdyn.  
“Why don’t they just kill me off?” she inquired, almost angrily. The notion rang through her mind, clear as day: It would have been so much easier for me if they had just killed me off.  
The figure emitted a cold chuckle once more.  
“Camdyn, Camdyn, Camdyn,” it condescended. “The government cannot kill you just yet. This is, admittedly, a learning experience for them. Until you, their formula has worked perfectly. But you’re just a girl. Just an ordinary girl who got hold of the wrong literature. They are making sure that, in the future, they are able to deal properly with cases such as yours. Does this make sense?”  
She nodded.  
“I’m a lab rat,” she growled, suddenly indignant.  
“Of course. Otherwise, the Council of Officials and the Triumvirate would not have let you live so long. They are studying you, Camdyn Layne. Perfecting the Perfection.”  
Camdyn’s hand moved to her Compact Personal Timeline Module, and she considered that it was just another way for them to get a hold on her life. She tugged her hand away and jammed it into the pocket of her uniform coat.  
“My, my,” the midnight figure cooed. “How symbolic of you. I suppose we cannot force you to use the methods we have set forth, but, I daresay that you’re merely inconveniencing yourself.”  
She curled her lip in disgust and turned away from the figure.  
“Are we finished here?” she growled at it.  
“I suppose we must be,” it replied, looking left to right, as though to make sure that it had not forgotten something of importance.  
And it vanished.  
Camdyn huffed in frustration. It was despicable of those Republic Officials to continue toying with her in this way. It revealed them, however, to possess that very quality which she had just expressed was part of human nature: to care. They cared so desperately about the world that they had created that they found it impossible to care about anything else. Camdyn realized that this sounded quite like her. Desperately clinging to the little world she had built around her. So desperate to maintain it that, rather than allow a murder on her watch, she had committed one herself. Camdyn’s mouth suddenly felt dry and dusty. A self- loathing like no other she had ever experienced welled up in her, burning and churning from her very depths. Awakening long- quieted thoughts. Awakening long- choked sentiments. She drew her knees up to her chest like the child she was, crossed her arms on top of them, buried her face in her uniform sleeves, and wept openly. She had not wept since the night she had shorn off her hair, and to Camdyn, nothing could have felt more right. She wept and wept and wept. She remembered and recalled and wept even more. The tears flowed down freely and she began to sob, even to wail, but in her sorrow was the sweetest release she could attain. To feel again. To care again. To revert to what she had always been. A thinker.  
And, Oh, did she think.  
She thought about how she had wasted all that time training and practicing. She thought about how she had wasted so many opportunities to cause others to think and to question and to wonder. She thought of all the weeks and nights that she had spent at that table playing cards and about how she could have taught them to think. She thought of all the faces of all the people she had met and regretted not challenging them to think. She thought of—  
—of Alces. She thought of how she had wronged him and his family. She thought of how she had destroyed a life that could have been saved, no matter how lost in fury and hatred. She thought of how that passion, although wasted on petty feuds, could have been channeled into a siege of the Republic. A siege of their system. A siege of their thinking. She thought of how hurt Alces had been by her smug pride in the killing of his brother. She thought of how she could have helped him help his brother. She thought of Nat even as far back as Gret and her training platoon and how she had almost taught them something. How she could have taught them to truly think. She even thought of Jaxi Jay, who would be eight years old by now. She thought of Jaxi Jay and her perfect auburn curls. Jaxi Jay and her sticky face and her fairy’s- laugh and the gap between her two front teeth. Of her confusion at being removed from her older sister. Of her struggling against the attendants. Of her collapsing under the influence of an anesthetic.  
Camdyn gritted her teeth and vowed then and there to find that child. To find her and to apologize to her and to somehow bring some hope back to her. The Metropolis was massive, but the determination of Guardsman Second- Class Camdyn Layne Alethea was much greater. She found herself smiling at her newfound sense of purpose, and she lay down across the worn bus seat and slept comfortably for the first time in years. And for the first time in her life, she dreamed.  
She stood in a field. It was not an ash- waste, nor a field of rye, but a meadow, as she had once read to have existed in the World Before. The soft green of the tall, wild, windswept grass ran as far as her eye could see, dotted with delicate flowers of pink and yellow and white and purple, of every shape and size imaginable. The green sea of life stretched out to meet the horizon of an azure sky, filled with wispy white clouds and a sun as golden and warm as a freshly baked rye cake hanging there. The breeze that swept the grass with a pleasant aroma that Camdyn had never before experienced. She could only describe it as alive. Her hair was full length again, pouring down her back and gleaming a fiery red in the light of the young sun. The wind softly tousled her hair, blowing the coppery locks gently about her face and letting them stream out behind her. Camdyn looked down to find that she was wearing a white dress, in the style that she used to make for herself and of a brighter shade of white than Camdyn had ever beheld. She looked up at the sky, breathing in deeply, not moving from her place in the meadow. An infinitesimal speck in the broad expanse of glorious nature. She did not speak. She did not sing. She barely breathed. She simply was. She had never felt so much all at once before. As she stood, she realized that she was standing in the illustration from the book that Papa had shown her so many times, and that she, in turn, had shown Jaxi. Camdyn spun around, taking in the scene from every direction. Never had she felt so freed by being trapped. Trapped within the confines of a picture. A picture that she knew inside and out. Where it stopped and where it began. What it contained and what it didn’t. She understood it, and was therefore free to enjoy it. It had boundaries, which allowed her to love it and explore it and traipse through it without fear of harm or pain. With a sigh of relief, she laid back on the grass to continue admiring the long fingers of the wispy clouds overhead. Freedom. Freedom at last.  
A great shaking and bouncing roused Camdyn from her sleep, and she quickly uncurled her knees from her chest in order to not be thrown from the bus’s worn bench seat, shoving her feet— shod with thick- soled boots— into the back of the seat in front of her. As she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and shook the drowsiness from her head, she wondered deep down whether the dream had been yet another design of the Republic Officials. She desperately hoped that it was something of her own— an overflow of her spirit. Something the Republic could not take nor touch nor buy nor build. After checking her watch and discovering that she had been on the rickety bus for nearly eight hours by this point, she glanced out the window to find that the bus had crossed the rutted boundary that demarcated the end of the ash- wastes and the beginning of the “holy ground” of the Metropolis, Jewel of the Republic. She leaned around the seat in front of her, glancing up through the windshield of the bus and discovered that the road now sloped upwards, leading towards the great plateau on which the Metropolis perched, its black spires piercing the soft grayness like so many jagged teeth jutting up from the jaw of a hungry beast. Camdyn shuddered with disgust as she beheld her home from afar. Its smokestacks belched out smoke in black and white and gray, filling the air with a swirling cloud of charcoal. Its walls crawled with tiny specks: guards on every turret and every watch- stand, moving back and forth along the wall between them, as though they were searching for something they had lost there.  
Camdyn now sat ramrod straight, staring ahead intently. She did so for the remainder of the trek up to the city walls, and until the bus heaved and hissed, brakes locking rudely and roughly as the door opened for her to disembark. She stood, dragging her enormous neoplasticine footlocker behind her, and moved up the aisle unsurely. Nodding gratefully to the little old bus driver, she labored down the steps, doing her best not to allow her trunk to shove her out the door and onto her face with its awkward and bulky weight. After finally hopping off of the last step and heaving her trunk along with her, she stopped and looked around curiously. She did not know the place where she stood, which was curious to her, for she knew the Metropolis quite well. It was a great empty asphalt lot, fenced in on every side by a chain link fence topped with shining wisps and curls of barbed wire. Empty, otherwise. Beyond it, Camdyn could make out several other empty, fenced- in lots The bus hissed and shook, doors closing, motor restarting, and pulled away from her. Behind it, Camdyn saw Kay, Arelm, and Arx Mendacium standing side by side. The Triumvirate. The bus rumbled out of the gate, which creaked shut behind it, giving a metallic hum as the lock slid electronically into place.  
“This is a bit out in the open for you, isn’t it?” Camdyn jeered across the lot, struggling to maintain her jaunty grin.  
Each one smiled and shook his head in a vaguely similar way, casting knowing glances at the other two that unnerved Camdyn. They stood, staring at her for a long while, not speaking, but occasionally looking from her to one another and back. She sighed and, leaving behind her footlocker, marched over to them. Kay was the first to speak.  
“It is good to see you, Miss Alethea,” he purred, smiling at her in a way that was almost warm and genuine.  
She did not respond.  
“My how you’ve grown, darling,” Arelm cooed, as though he was somehow impressed by the most natural of happenings.  
“Yes,” agreed Arx, nodding “you’re quite the young lady now.”  
She scowled at them and glanced from face to face.  
“Why was I brought here?”  
They all chuckled.  
“Why do you ask?” Kay queried, bending lower towards Camdyn. “Don’t you trust us?”  
“Not at all,” she muttered, leaning backward and away from him.  
“Camdyn,” piped Arelm “you must understand that there were really no ulterior motives for bringing you here. Commander Argyle spoke the truth.”  
She scowled again, this time directly at Arelm. Arx sighed and shook his head at her.  
“Listen, Camdyn,” Arx intoned slowly. “We really don’t want to have to kill you. When Commander Argyle asked to have your duty station changed if the need presented itself, we elected to make this duty station your last chance.”  
Kay straightened up and stood in line with his three brothers. Camdyn also straightened, facing them with a questioning expression.  
“Camdyn,” Kay began solemnly “you must know how much trouble you cause. We’ve been trying to decide the best way to deal with you, and there just doesn’t seem to be one. We’ve decided that if you cannot conform properly in this environment, after all that learning you’ve done, then we will terminate you as a threat to our system.”  
She clenched her jaw.  
“I understand.”  
Arelm stepped up.  
“We hope you do, Camdyn. We truly hope that you do.”

Several hours later, Camdyn stood before a tiny, grimy bunk with a mattress as stiff as the ground of the ash- wastes. It was shoved up against the wall, in a row of many others, arranged much like the enormous collective barracks at the Peace Corps Training Center. She sighed and shoved her footlocker underneath the dingy bunk, checked her pockets for her transfer papers, and turned to seek out the administrative offices for her division. After several hours of ambling, she located it, checked in, and signed for a Guardsman’s Post. Since she had been gone from the Metropolis, the Peace Corps had issued a decree that at least one Corpsman must stand on every street corner, should any of the citizens need aid or correction. Camdyn was assigned the southwest corner of the intersection of South 41st Street and Main, which was a good twenty- minute walk from her barracks. She was assigned the “up shift”, in which she served from dawn until high noon, and then from dusk until midnight. Two six- hour shifts, six hours apart. A daytime shift in which her primary function was to prevent conflict and a nighttime shift in which her primary function was to enforce curfew. She accepted the assignment with admirable stoicism, but was internally groaning. After picking up her standard- issue handgun— a sleek, angular, and black metal instrument that was much heavier than it looked— she marched back to her bunk in the barracks to wait for her first shift.  
She wished that she did not have a schedule that was so unnatural to the body, but she understood that this was most likely a design to ensure that the Republic’s Peace Corps did not have any extra free time to get into trouble with. She also wished that her assignment had not been so far from the 8th Municipal Education Center. In fact, she was stationed far past it, in the opposite direction of the familial barracks. As she considered this, she realized that Jaxi would no longer be living in their old cubicle. She had not lived there since the night of Momma’s death. She had been in state care all this while, which meant that Camdyn had literally no idea where to look for her other than the Education Center, which let out just as Camdyn’s second shift began. She suddenly began to realize just how impossible the task of finding her sister would be. As she lay there on the shabby mattress, any hope she had of finding her sister and reconciling herself to that gem of a child was utterly shattered. She knew that all she had left was to conform or be killed, and Camdyn did not really find either of those two options appealing.  
She had several hours of rest before she was required to report to her post for duty, so she lay in her bunk, staring up at the bottom of the bunk above her, rather disturbed by the eerie silence of the barracks, which were half- full of others who lived an “up shift” regimen. Silence was familiar to her, but it was not her friend. She had been born into it and it’s presence had permeated her young childhood. It filled the Metropolis, making any sound a nuisance. She had always hated the silence. It was impossible to think when your brain was numbed by the lack of stimulus. It was impossible to reason while your brain was desperately searching to occupy it’s audial receptors. It was impossible to reflect when half of your subconscious was left without something to keep it busy. There was nothing to be heard, there was nothing to be seen, which drained the need for anything to be said or written or thought about. The perfect way to placate the masses.  
At dawn, Camdyn showed up to her post and relieved her fellow Guardsman of his shift. She stood on the street corner, counting the minutes in the hours, mentally checking that no citizen was out past the fourth hour of dark, staring straight ahead at the gray, stone building across from her. She recollected that the silence of the daytime was far more exasperating than that of the nighttime, as people meandered to and fro, never speaking, never acknowledging, never speaking. She attempted to keep herself busy by reciting some old poetry that she had once known so well. She failed miserably at this endeavor, only able to remember little couplets and phrases of certain poems. Instead, she tried to write a bit of her own work, but found that there was little around her to write about. She was sure she could think of something if she tried, but she could barely muster the strength to stand up straight, let alone pour herself into a poem that no one would hear nor appreciate. So, she devoted her attention to the study of the less- than- interesting Metropolis Citizens that swarmed about her. She noted several groups of young children go past her, marching in lines on their way to the Education Centers, and she marveled that they were coming from this direction. Upon further inspection, she realized that they were accompanied by matrons and attendants and that these must be Children of the State. Unclaimed children. The State Care Barracks must be on the east side of the city, Camdyn thought to herself, as she glanced from row to row. I can’t possibly be this lucky, she insisted internally, almost denying that the Triumvirate would place her so near to her sister. They couldn’t possibly have done this by mistake.  
As she watched, she noticed several other groups of children go along Main Street. All the Education Centers were located on Main Street, each one taking up the full block between the streets which corresponded to the ages of the children who attended. The Infant Education Center was located on Main between West Street— the closest street to the wall on the West end of the city— and First Street. The First Education Center was located on Main between First Street and Second Street. The Second Education Center was located on Main between Second and Third Street and so on. All that these children had to do was trek up Main to reach their Education Centers, and they all had to go past Camdyn.  
Her heart began to pond as she scanned the neat little lines of children. None of them seemed right. This group seemed too young and that group seemed too old and that group was all boys and— there. There, across the street just in front of her, in the front half of the line was a little girl whose shaved head showed only a warm auburn fuzz. Pale eyes. A pink ribbon around her wrist, with creases where it had once been knotted and then unknotted to make room for a bit of growth. Camdyn was stuck, frozen to the spot, and she realized that she could not approach Jaxi Jay nor call to her nor even wave or wink. She was cursed to merely observe. And she knew that it could be years before the child would notice Camdyn of her own accord. Citizens of the Metropolis were trained not to make eye contact with members of the Peace Corps unless it was an emergency. Jaxi Jay would never see her. They would have trained her to stare at the back of the head in front of her and not to let her eyes wander. The group marched right past her from across the street, and Camdyn had to clench her jaw to keep herself from reaching out and touching Jaxi.  
So this was Camdyn’s punishment.  
To have her sister dangled in front of her face every day for the rest of her life.  
To watch her sister grow and be indoctrinated and be so stuffed full of propaganda that she would become just exactly like every other citizen of this vast waste of brick and mortar. This was the hell they had built for her. Camdyn wondered if they had bothered to assign the previous holder of her position to a new station or if they had just killed him off to make space for her. She burned to run to her sister. She itched to hold her and to apologize for not being there. She could barely maintain her position as her eyes clouded up with tears. This was enough to break Camdyn. Enough to make her choose between conformity and ephemerality. If she had to join or die, then Camdyn resolved that this— to be tantalized and mocked by the mere presence of her dear sister— was far worse than death. She did not know how long she would wait, but she resolved to choose the lesser of two evils. As she stared straight ahead, desperately watching her sister out of her peripheral vision, she heard a quiet ringing. Her Module.  
CONFLICT IS A FATAL DISEASE  
YOU WILL RECEIVE NO FURTHER UPDATES  
She scrunched up her eyebrows and glared at the words on the update, as if doing so would cause them to make more sense. Something was going on that she did not want the Republic Officials to notice. Something that a single extra update would cause them to begin investigating. She hooked her Compact Personal Timeline Module back onto her belt, and cast a quick glance over her shoulder, catching a final glimpse of that flash of pink at her sister’s wrist. Snapping her head to face front, she gritted her teeth and began to wonder. She could hear Kay Mendacium’s words of warning resurfacing in her mind. Conflict, Camdyn, inevitably ends here. In perfect grayness. What you have not yet understood is that conflict is a fatal disease.  
Camdyn frowned. She knew that he was right. But why had she reminded herself of them at all, let alone more than once? It was strange and disturbing, and Camdyn could not understand what her future self was trying so desperately to articulate. It made no sense whatsoever. After such a virus is introduced to single body, the only way to stop the spread of that virus to the many is to kill infected body and the virus with it. She stood the entirety of her guard repeating this in her mind. How could something that she knew to be one of the most important truths of the Republic’s system be so key to her? She rocked back and forth gently on her heels as she thought, suddenly caught up in her mind and completely unaware of her surroundings.  
The end of her shift came much sooner than she expected. Her fellow Corpsman came to relieve her, and she walked back to the barracks along with all the other “up shifters”, still struggling internally. She thought of how lovely her sister had gotten. Her enormous baby’s cheeks had melted away into a more delicate face, yet still a round and pale one. Her freckles were more pronounced and her eyes were so vacant. Camdyn had seen those eyes, pale and lifeless. Empty and unmoving. And it killed her.  
Camdyn served in this way for four days without mishap. On the fifth day, however, when she woke, she felt as though it would be different. As though it would be memorable. Maybe even pivotal. This pumped her full of energy and purpose. Maybe today she would finally embrace her sister’s tiny frame. Maybe today she would finally tell Jaxi how much she loved her. Maybe she would even be able to snap her sister out of the thought- coma induced by nonstop Republic propaganda. Just as Camdyn roused herself, she heard a ring from her Module, which confused her, considering that her previous update had been one claiming that no more would come. However, she snatched it from its place on her belt as it hung on her bunk, and opened the update.  
NO FURTHER UPDATES  
She groaned and cursed herself for being so cryptic, then dragged herself from the stiff mattress. It was five minutes before dawn by the time Camdyn had washed, dressed, and made her way out to 41st Street and Main to stand watch. Dawn came and went, a mere lessening of the dim and black as opposed to an increase in light. Several cargo trucks and Republic Official sedans sped by quickly but relatively quietly, as well as several buses and a handful of message- runners. Something was off with each one of them, however. The drivers all scowled. The runners all frowned. Those early- rising businessmen drew their faces into the blackest of looks. Some of them walked with their Information Tablets before them, staring down in frustration. In confusion, Camdyn glanced from one citizen to another, only to find the same exasperated grimace. What is wrong with everyone? Camdyn inquired of herself, awed at their expressions. She had never seen such a display of emotion on any one face in the Metropolis, let alone on every single face, collectively. It made little sense to her.  
As she was contemplating this, she caught sight of the straight line of eight- year- olds in which her sister marched. Just as they reached the corner and began to cross the road, a black Republic Official’s sedan whipped around the corner, only a block up. It sped down 41st, toward its intersection with Main. Camdyn glanced from it to the children and back. It was not slowing down. She took a step forward, putting up a hand to warn the vehicle. But it did not slow down. As she screamed, she watched it plunge toward the children, nearly all of which dove away.  
Except one.  
Except one little auburn- headed girl who had been shoved back into the path of the speeding car by several of the larger children as they fled in terror.  
One little auburn- headed girl who watched as a member of the Peace Corps raced toward her.  
One little auburn- headed girl who recognized her sister’s face beneath that grayish purple patrol cap just as the sedan reached her.  
One little auburn- headed girl who the sedan struck at full speed and who landed in a heap on the curb.  
One little auburn- headed girl who, still breathing, was gathered into the arms of her sister, who sobbed and rocked her gently.  
One little auburn- headed girl who felt sad that her sister’s lovely uniform was getting so ruined and stained.  
One little auburn- headed girl who finally pronounced her sister’s name correctly.  
One little auburn- headed girl whose dying words were an apology that she had gotten blood on her sister’s clothes and that she hoped Camdyn would not have to scrub too hard to get it out.  
One little auburn- headed child who was finally freed from the prison- world into which she had been born; her birth an incarceration, her death an emancipation.  
Camdyn Layne Alethea knelt on the dusty pavement, bent crookedly over the petite frame of Jaxi’s body, sobbing violently and rocking the tiny corpse as though she meant to comfort it in death. She buried her face in its thin neck, storming and roiling like the far- away sea. For she felt far- away. She felt as though this was merely a dream. She felt as though the Metropolis had invaded her beautiful meadow and taken its terrors there. But it had not.  
The door of the sedan slammed as the driver— decked in the black uniform of a Republic Official’s Personal Guard— exited to come and inspect his handiwork. Camdyn was on her feet in moments, taser activated and eyes still streaming hot tears. He jerked back, startled by the weapon, and cowered behind his hands.  
“Hey, hey!” he squealed, still frantically retreating.  
Camdyn could tell that he had never experienced anger nor regret before and she knew that he was liable to do something rash and unpredictable. Those citizens around the now- sedan who had watched the scene unfold were now stopped, staring. This was something that they had never seen before. A crisis. A moral dilemma. A story with a conflict and a climax and an uncertain conclusion. They stood, frozen to the spot, gaping at the fresh corpse, the trembling trigger- hand, and the sniveling driver, awaiting fresh stimulus.  
“Listen! Listen!” the driver shrieked, glancing between the protective cover of his arms at Camdyn. “I didn’t get an update about it! Nothing should have happened! I cannot be held responsible for this!”  
Camdyn took a step forward, cocking her handgun to put a round in the chamber. The sound of metal part sliding and fitting into place met her ears, but it did not bring her comfort nor even a touch of clarity. It maddened her and tantalized her trigger- finger to curl.  
“You shouldn’t have to get an update,” she growled through gritted teeth, her face reddening in hatred as she spoke, “to slow down for a group of children. Or did you not know that Timeline Termination is permanent?”  
The driver, his intelligence insulted, was emboldened by her harshness.  
“They shouldn’t be in my road!” he cried, putting his hands by his sides indignantly.  
He looked around to the crowds around him for support.  
“Am I not in the right?!” he demanded of them. “Am I not?”  
To Camdyn’s disgust and horror, some of them agreed. Nodding and murmuring vague concessions. Some of them even stepped forward slightly, as if coming hesitantly to his aid. Camdyn glanced from one citizen to the next, trying to read their expressions through her stinging tears. Drawing a breath, she screamed at the driver loud enough for all in the vicinity to hear.  
“That was an innocent life and you destroyed it with your reckless stupidity! How dare you simply assume that an update will come! How dare you!”  
Camdyn could see that her own words resonated in the empty chests of a handful of the citizens around her— even piquing the interest of her fellow Guardsmen on each of the other three corners of the intersection, who crossed over to stand behind her at a fair distance. They, too, stepped off of the sidewalks and into the intersection, with an iota more boldness than before, as the gears of their minds began to turn— creaking and groaning— and the smokestacks of their hearts began to belch black smoke for the first time. Even citizens on other streets who beheld the scene from afar began to slowly turn their faces and paths toward the slowly growing crowd at the intersection of Main and 41st street. Camdyn glanced back at the driver. The driver whose morality and emotions were barely awakened to life. They had slumbered, full- grown and buried six feet under a dense layer of propaganda and re- education and any other method that the Republic Officials had to fling in the direction of its constituents. She steadied her stiffening right arm as it bore the glossy metal handgun steadily before her. Behind his eyes, his mind spun dizzily. He slowly backed into the car, which he had left with one wheel stuck on the curb, pausing there for a moment. In one fluid and rapid motion, he flung open the front passenger- side door, grasped the neoplasticine grip of the handgun mounted inside, and wrenched it from its place to point it at Camdyn, before she even had time to react.  
They both stood, quivering with rage and passion, eyes wild and weapons hungry. Camdyn watched out of the corners of her eyes as her fellow Guardsmen looked at one another, sure that if they moved for their weapons they would be shot on sight. Each and every one of them— citizens and guardsmen alike— became as still as the tiny body of the auburn- headed child who lay crumpled in the street. Camdyn’s mind raced. This. Right here. This was what she had been telling herself about and she knew it like she knew that she had two feet and ten toes. She watched warily as the man’s lips quivered and struggled to form the words that were bubbling up inside him.  
“What makes my killing her any worse than her delay of the Head Architectural Developer’s ride— and therefore his entire schedule?” he hissed, straining his neck and his jaw as he forced himself to articulate the mess of thoughts in his head, his volume increasing as he continued. “I haven’t received any updates today. No one has. How can you blame me for something that I did in ignorance?”  
Camdyn reached up with her left arm to wipe the sweat and tears from her brow as she did her best to stall.  
Conflict is a fatal disease.  
Quivering, she gritted her teeth, straining with all her might to think. What did it mean, Camdyn?  
And suddenly she realized.  
She must infect the body.  
With a deep breath, she pointed her handgun as straight and true as she could, grimacing and clenching her eyes shut to brace herself—  
—and fired at the false leather interior of the sedan.  
Aggravated, enraged, provoked, and believing that she had missed unintentionally, the driver screamed a battle- cry such as that great, gray city had never heard and returned fire.  
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.  
The entirety of a standard- issue magazine.  
It hurts far less to be shot that I thought, Camdyn mused dazedly as she dropped to her knees and tasted a warm, coppery fluid rise from her throat. But may this conflict be enough to upset the Perfection.  
She collapsed to her hands and knees, still not having breathed her last, and rolled onto her back, staring up at the ashen sky, side by side with her dear sister.  
As she watched, the citizens of the Metropolis made a choice.  
They chose a side and began to brawl.  
They stuck and screamed and howled and tore at one another, not truly able to cause much damage, but giving every ounce of effort they had because they had been convicted.  
Convicted and awakened.  
Camdyn sighed as she beheld her greatest achievement, marveling that an entire family had to die just to start a brawl in the street.  
And she breathed her very last, honored to have such a role in the world.  
Such a role, indeed.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN  
One Month Later  
Alces ground his teeth firmly as he deftly sutured a wound in the leg of a fellow Agrarian. Blood, burnt from cauterization, still besmirched the groaning man’s thigh as he gripped the edges of the operating table, desperately struggling not to squirm.  
“Hold still, Ben- Rae,” hissed Alces emphatically, not bothering to draw his eyes from his delicate work.  
Ben- Rae Gilgenson growled with frustration and bit down on his shirt collar to suppress the urge to kick Medical Examiner Alces and send him flying. Ben- Rae was an enormous man, covered in orange- red stubble, despite his shaving twice a day to keep the Behavioral Surveillance Teams satisfied. He was much more pale than most Agrarians, coming from a family that had lived and worked in the Fourth Agricultural District for many generations, but had never stopped producing offspring that didn’t redden deeply in harsh sunlight. They were hardy folk, however, and extremely dedicated workers.  
A mere half an hour before Alces had began to stitch the gaping wound in Ben- Rae’s leg, Ben- Rae had been in the mountains. The head of his pickaxe, with which he had been trying to open a geode, had suddenly come loose from its handle in mid- swing, and had gored Ben- Rae’s leg on the way to the ground. After being rushed in by several other Agrarians, he had sat groaning on the table as Alces realized he was out of any kind of numbing substance with enough strength to dull the pain of the chasmal abrasion in the pale, meaty thigh of his friend. Ben- Rae sweated and strained until Alces had finished and clipped the excess suture away from the wound, at which point the enormous, brawny man relaxed and laid back, letting out a string of swears in a soft, tired voice.  
“I’m so sorry, Ben- Rae,” Alces apologized sincerely. “There’s been this weird uptake in medical emergencies this month. As though Personal Timeline Updates just aren’t being made or getting through somehow. I’ve used everything I have and the Metropolis’s Medical Supply Warehouse refuses to send me more. I don’t understand what’s happening to us all.”  
Ben- Rae glowered at him and glanced down at his leg, exposed from where Alces had cut away part of his cargo pants, not quite ready to move it.  
“Alces,” he growled, his deep voice echoing loudly in the tiny Medical Examiner’s Station, “thank you for doing what you can.”  
Next, the gruff man swung an arm out to the bottle of saline alcohol, coveted by the locals for its odd sweetness, took a long draught from it, and slammed it back down. To Alces’s surprise, he then swung his legs off of the steel table and onto the ground, standing on them firmly as he strode out the door, not bothering to ask to be cleaned up any further. Alces sighed and sat down, looking slowly around him at the gory scene. Blood everywhere. Instruments strewn about. Linens and bandages and gray canvas torn away from cargo pants draped over every surface. A knocked- over spool of dissolving suture. A handful of syringes with labels in varying fonts and colors tossed across the counter. The medical blowtorch with which Alces had cauterized the wound had been knocked over and had used its burning tip to melt through one of the empty plastic syringes. At the foot of the operating table, a puddle of saline around a star- like shatter- pattern of broken glass where a bottle had been knocked from its perch. With a groan, Alces heaved hefted himself from the chair and began to clean up. He would be out of any kind of vaccine, injection, saline, and antibiotic he had if this kept up. People of the Republic were so used to receiving Personal Timeline Updates to inform them if something needed adjusting that if they didn’t receive one they were as careless as careless could be. To assume that one’s world is perfect is to set oneself up to be crushed by it. Alces cleared and washed and organized his instruments, boxed the bandages and syringes and blowtorch, then set himself to sopping up the saline and the blood after he scraped up the glass bits.  
He had found it difficult to practice properly when the updates had stopped coming in. Not only did it cause a surge of injuries and invalids, it caused an enormous amount of medical information to be inaccessible to Alces. In general, with the aid of the Perfection, whenever a citizen was careless and allowed a medical injury to bleed through onto the Collective Timeline, Alces could employ as many Loop- Delete Timelines as necessary to achieve the perfect treatment that he needed. All he ever needed to do was to open his information tablet— a luxury afforded the Medical Examiners— find the update with all the patient’s information and move along with the operation or treatment. These updates could be perfectly trusted, for an indeterminate amount of Loop- Delete Timelines had been created and destroyed to perfect them. In any of those timelines, Alces may have found a mistake in his own work, or an allergy of the patient to medication, or a complication of a more complex nature. He then merely updated his past self, which split the timeline from the Present Point on the Collective Timeline, looped itself back to its past on the same Collective Timeline, and was thereby deleted by the update itself. Because, if the Medical Examiner had found a patient allergy and updated himself to prevent the reaction, the decision that had caused the reaction— which was split away by the update— was then deleted by the fact that the Medical Examiner did not make that decision again. These Loop- Delete Timelines do not exist in the memory of their creators, having been deleted, hence those who wield the Perfection, or, the power of Time Editation, must simply obey their updates and no harm nor calamity will ever befall them. After the young Examiner’s updates stopped coming, he was left in the dark. He had continued to send updates for a while after they stopped coming, but eventually he gave up. It was no use.  
Alces wondered what could possibly be going on as he finished his final few chores in the Medical Examiner’s Station, some of which were new to him. He had begun to distill several new bottles of saline from the stalks of the rye that he could get by scrounging around the developmental factories, seeing as how the Metropolis Warehouse refused to supply him with more than the generally allotted amount. As he strode across the small station, carrying several bottles of distilling saline from the cabinet in the back to the refrigerator, a small flash caught his eye. Something reflective on the ground brightly reflected the sunlight that streamed in through the window, and Alces realized it to be a piece of stray glass as he approached it after stocking the cooler with the bottles. He put out his hand to pick it up and instantly recoiled, yowling. The piece of glass had been much longer and more pointed than he had been able to see, and had lacerated his palm from wrist to ring finger.  
Nursing his newfound wound, he retreated to the sink to wash and bind it, cursing the name of the Republic and the Perfection. Nothing seemed to make sense any longer. This way and that, people were having to decide whether or not they were going to do such- and- such a chore, or whether they were going to raise their child in such- and- such a way, or if they meant to say such- and- such a thing. It was strange to hear them thinking, as most of them were forced to do it out loud, in order to focus. To weigh consequences against benefits and attempt to choose a path. There had been several suicides, to the terror and shame of the village. Something was more wrong than it had ever been, and the people could feel it like they felt their own hands moving. As Alces tightened the final knot on his hand’s binding, the door slammed open, rattling against the wall behind it. Ben- Rae stood there, a grin on his face and a deep breath in his lungs.  
“The Guardsmen have just renounced their jurisdiction, Alces!” he cried, pointing behind him to the square. “They haven’t been able to contact their Headquarters for a month and they’ve just received a dispatch saying that the City has Fallen to the People!”  
The enormous— and wounded— man ran off towards the village commons, and Alces, bewildered, followed him. The sight that met his eyes made his heart leap a hurdle. The Guardsmen had shed their purplish gray uniform jackets, tossing them in a heap on the porch of the Guardsmen’s Station, and were now intermingled in the enormous crowd of shabby, sweaty Agrarians. Many of them smiled and shook the hands of the former Guardsmen. Some even hugged them. Others glared and glowered as though they thought they could burn a pair of holes in the bodies of these pretentious members of the Peace Corps. From the belly of the crowd, gray- headed elders were making their way to the porch of the Guardsmen’s Station, chosen and sent by those around them for their wisdom and age.  
As Alces watched, he discovered that his people— himself included— had been restored to life. They understood the extent of their depravity. They understood their formidable potential. They understood that they must think and reason and wonder and inquire and live by what they learn by doing so. They understood that they must dedicate themselves. They must slave away for knowledge and progress and success.  
And by slaving away, they would be free.


End file.
